Big Red; Lost in castration.

Rating: 1/10 (23 September 2008)

Guillermo Del Toro, who's highly decorative and detailed art of film making gave us some reasonably interesting films over the years; now after his Roman Triumph - to which it is equal in decadence -, The Goth-girly fantasy fest of the overrated "Pan's Labyrinth", attempted to make a sequel to his earlier far more enjoyable Hellboy flick.
But this time, to draw in the emo cash-cows, with more kitschy schlock after they were saturated with The Jackson abomination, Guillermo saw it fit to trim Big Red of more than his horns, namely Red's trouser twins and make Hellboy a big softy. If Red wasn't bald he would probably have a emo haircut. (I felt like giving you a long list of hyperbolas expressing Red's new sensitivity , but I'll leave you with the superlative, That Del Toro would have made him wear a Jack Skellington hoody if he had his way)
All through out the movie Red's usually phlegmatic one-liners lacked any impact; because Liz would pop up and "shook his manhood" and Red just took it like a sort of Jerry Lewis character.(Oye, yes dear.) From a dramatic point of view, wouldn't Hellboy's violent temper, his isolation and his inability to get love Liz even though he has won her heart, serve as a more interesting premise? Apparently the teenage relationship they have in this movie, will appeal to all the sensitive teeny crybabies out there, who would hope that the real Drama would be Liz and Red dealing with Red's metro sexuality after Liz forced him to read Naruto yaoi.
Dealing with metro sexuality; there were elves...ELVES!! When have elves ever been a good idea in a movie! They are the Ewoks of mythology! Oh, now and not just pointy eared elves; No! All new, dark Gothic elves. That being sad, the antagonist was one of the most boring villains I have ever seen,even more boring that Sauron. Most likely he could only be more boring if he were played by William S Macy. And the annoying show-boat kung fu! Kroenen was fun, but this Kung fu was nuking the fridge.
The plot is basically copy-pasted from Lotr and thereby equally dull, and the plot as well conveys the platitudinous sensibilities of alienated and grief-lecherous weirdo's, who identify with the freaks in this movie, Yes Freaks, because that what The Hellboy characters this time have truly been reduced to. Real Tim Burton freaks, who's isolated eccentricities themselves make them superior to the awful humans, that always kill what they don't know! How incredibly pathetic, I for one was cheering on the human assault in the horrible animated puppet-show prologue.
The only real perk of this flick, was the incredibly asynchronous Character of Krauss, voiced by Seth MacFarlane who used the same voice for...Krauss, the ex-DDR Olympian Ski-jumper goldfish. In fact, I expected a goldfish to swim his Krauss' helmet and him to say: "Ah, Lizz I kan zee yor Schmutz-plätchen." He was ridiculously entertaining.
Still, like many people said, a monster film is always entertaining, even a bad one, like Hellboy 2 and I can only attest that the production value was phenomenal, and it featured a lot of Animatronics which is a welcome departure from all the CGI, deluding movie magic these day. But if you dress up Steve Buscemi like Frank Sinatra, you are still left with an ugly weirdo in fine threads, this applies to Hellboy 2 as well.
one more thing; "What ever happened to Danny Elfman? His works is going the way of Zimmer, all thunder, no substance"