Excellent

Rating: 9/10 (11 February 2012)

Guillermo del Toro's first pass at Mike Mignola's quirkie indie comic book, about a baby demon brought up to be a kind of a policeman of the supernatural, succeeds on almost every level. The story is good, and redolent of Mignola's work (albeit filtered for a mass audience), the casting is first rate, as are their performances, and the visual realisation of everything in Hellboy's universe is terrific, from the Lovecraftian monsters to Abe Sapien and Hellboy himself (a masterly combination of Ron Perlman's natural architecture and huge prosthetics which do not seem to impede his movement at all).
The script, too is good, with strong characterisation (again, reflecting the comic well) and a good dose of very welcome humour. And you care for these characters: they are a lot more than "mere" comic characters.
I would comment that the visuals, while quite excellent, don't attempt to capture the high contrast quirky originality of Mignola's art, but this is clearly a production design choice (and, given Mignola's high degree of involvement with the production, taken with his approval and co-operation).
This film is hugely enjoyable.