Improves on the original

Rating: 6/10 (17 August 2008)

I didn't care much for the original "Hellboy", which I watched just last week for the first time. Well the little lady dragged me out to see the sequel (isn't it supposed to be the other way around?) and I guess I'm glad because I thought it was considerably more entertaining. The villains are more compelling and interesting; in the first one they were some Nazi rejects and Rasputin, truly weird but not very interesting. In this one it's representatives of the ancient elvish or faerie race who've become discontent with human development and decided to renew an age-old war with humanity. Hellboy, ironically but predictably, is on the side of the humans instead of his fellow beasties.
The one thing I said I did enjoy about the first movie was Ron Perlman's performance. It's even better this time around. Selma Blair is still kind of weak, but she's in less of the film and they wisely didn't ask Rupert Evans back. Jeffrey Tambor is just as out of place in this film as he was in the first one. Johann Kraus is sort of a bizarre character that I didn't think completely worked. But basically I thought this one was funnier (the beer drinking scene with Hellboy and Abe Sapien is classic, raising the whole movie to a higher level), and also I liked the villains a lot more. I like the romance between Abe (Doug Jones) and Princess Nuala (Anna Walton), because it was dealt with in a much lighter tone than the romance in the first film, or most superhero movies for that matter. Both "Hellboy 2" and "Iron Man" showed this summer that a subtle romance can work in a superhero movie, and the audience won't feel either imposed upon or ripped off. This one is played for laughs as well as genuine sentiment, a perfectly impossible affair.
One small note -- it seems like with the whole scary elves thing, the director del Toro may be "gearing up" for the Hobbit 2 parter he's going to be doing. I've got my fingers crossed, but hopefully it'll be a lot better than this.