Recycle

Rating: 7/10 (1 October 2009)

If you haven't watched the movie, you may be wondering what my summary means. It's in reference to the environmentally friendly message(mind you, I am with them on that) of the film, as well as the fact that the plot contains quite a lot of ideas that del Toro has used in his earlier work, namely Blade II and, yup, the movie that this is the sequel to. Overall, the story's fine, it just seems like the main conflicts in this could be resolved far sooner than they are, and there's no explanation in the flick for why they aren't, which is obviously a let-down. There are several holes, and so many occurrences appear to be of no consequence, or aren't taken seriously in the picture. The silliness level is kicked up a notch, and frankly, this does try too hard at being funny, at points. A lot of it does work, and this does garner some deserved laughs. A couple of characters come off as thin, one-note jokes. Blair portrays Liz as being stronger than last time we saw her, without losing the essence of her role, and in general does quite good in this. Perlman nails his part, again; I'm not certain he could screw it up, really. Hyde Pierce no longer provides the voice for Abe, but Jones, who also provides the demanding physical portion, and did in the first as well, does nicely. One of the new additions is Seth MacFarlane, who is great, though he sounds rather close to Klaus, off his show American Dad(...in spite of the fact that he apparently doesn't do that voice... huh). Another is Luke Goss, who, I guess, just really digs getting made up as an Albino and playing... well, I shouldn't say, I'd be revealing spoilers, and I don't intend to do so here. This is definitely more in the genre of fantasy than the original, and it seems that they indulged in the visually stimulating, and less dramatically interesting, aspect of it, namely, there are a *ton* of imaginative, creatively designed beings in this, without any of them particularly being used, even subtly, as metaphors, for situations, types of people or anything else that we can relate to. The effects are excellent, no doubt about that. However, if you aren't into the spectacle, you will find that somewhat unsatisfying. The action is stylized and awesome, clearly Animé-inspired, as Guillermo likes it. He also puts as the most gears he possibly could fit into two hours. The pace is fast. There is infrequent and usually mild or moderate language, disturbing content, and violence and gore that is apparently OK for 13-year-olds to see. The DVD comes with a subbed, informative and entertaining director's commentary track, notes he made, often with video clips, and a bunch of featurettes. I recommend this to fans of those involved with making it, the comic books and especially the supernatural. 7/10