McCheesy's take on "Hellboy II: The Golden Army"

Rating: 8/10 (26 August 2008)

The mythical world starts a rebellion against humanity in order to rule the Earth, so as Hellboy and his team returns they must save the world from the rebellious creatures. Now, as the creatures who inhabit the spiritual realm gear-up for an all out attack on the human plane, the only one capable of saving the Earth is a tough-talking hellspawn rejected by both worlds.
'Hellboy 2: The Golden Army' is irrefutably a whole lot better than the first Hellboy. While I wouldn't consider the first Hellboy a bad film but let's face it, that one had its fair share of "Bad Things That Shouldn't Be in A Movie" but still I enjoyed it especially because of the dual blade wielding Nazi masked man Karl Ruprecht Kroenen. Now that's what I call a bonafide villain. That guy basically has the word 'evil' all over him. This one however, had a better villain (Sorry Karl), in the form of exiled Prince of the mythical world Nuada. He wants to control the legendary "Golden Army" and let it wreak havoc in our planet and in order to do that, he must have the pieces of the crown that controls the indestructible army.
Hellboy 2 had 10x the fun of the first one, the action was 10x grander and in epic scale and the work done in the costume design was superbly done. Visionary director Guillermo Del Toro isolated the use of CGI to correlate with the make-up and costume design of the monsters and the outcome is visually stunning. A new addition to the BPRD was more than welcome, ectoplasmic entity (Gasbag according to Hellboy) Johann Krauss voiced by Seth McFarlane who did a fine job voicing the character.
One thing that you'll notice in this film (besides the much improved storyline) is that they turned the fun-factor up a notch. Even up until now I still can't get the drunken karaoke duet of Hellboy and Abe in the tune of Barry Manilow's "Can't Smile Without You" out my noggin. What was Del Toro thinking?! It was so random and out of the blue. But I have to say, it worked pretty damn well. I lol'd.
Hellboy 2: The Golden Army is a 9.