Not Quite Gold, But A Shinny Silver True And True

Rating: 7/10 (14 July 2008)

Hellboy 2 is yet another film with summer fever, the symptoms of which consist of adrenaline pumping and jaw dropping special effects, imaginative designs, snappy dialog, and plots and characterizations not worth the ink that wrote them.
Like "Iron Man", "The Incredible Hulk", "Indiania Jones", etc, it's a fun ride, and like them as well, at the end there's' not much to think about, and the more you may think back the less and less satisfied you may become with all the non "super" portions of the movie.
I will say this of all the summer fodder, so far, Hellboy was the one I found the most entertaining. Hellboy, was never the most well written comic in the world, it's charms lie largely with the artwork and the way relatively unknown mythologies from all around the globe get blended into the classic troupes of pulp comicdom. In the film this translates into talking psychic mermen named after Abraham Lincoln, Ghostly non corporeal German doctors bound in their fishbowl suits (and voiced by Seth Mcfarlan...the same voice used for the evil German dr. in the body of the goldfish from American Dad), a grown up version of Stepehen Kings "Firestarter", forest elementals, cannibalistic pixies, and the anti-Christ himself acting more like "The Thing" from "The Fantastic Four", down to the cigars.
Helllboy was never that great of a story in and of itself, and here is no exception. The villain is particularly non threatening or sympathetic (the characters of Shrek and Neverending Story make better claims for there fairly-lands).
Good combination of CGI and traditional special effects. Good characters in a stale melodrama, which doesn't mix well with the action adventure portion of the story. Its worth seeing for the sheer spectacle, a good combo of the images of Pans and Hellboy 1, but not too much of the brains or heart of either.
Which is not to say I didn't like it, though stiff in places it does perfectly capture the super-adventure in it's bizarre and ridiculous glory. Though the summer sickness, can reduce a film to ashes often quickly enough, with Hellboy it's produced a conventional, but still dazzling fever dream