Funny, Fun and brilliant visuals with little CG.

Rating: 7/10 (12 July 2008)

HellboyII: The Golden Army - In the sequel to Hellboy, our titular doom-fisted character (Ron Perlman) is up against Prince Nuada (Luke Goss) who, after an age old treaty between humans and...the rest has been made, vows to take back the surface world for his kind.
I enjoyed this movie. It's better and more fun than the original. It's always refreshing to see summer movies done with limited CGI (as with Batman Begins and it's so richly anticipated successor), as these puppets and costumes are more organic and interesting than anything a computer could come up with. Stunts are also cooler than CGI, because it's a real human in peril. This is why CGI should never take over completely, because where's the fun if the computers can take over all of the artwork? When the source of creativity is always a machine, there's a problem.
Ron Perlman is solid funny and charismatic as Hellboy. Doug Jones's Abe Sapien also has his voice this time around, and a new level of humanity and friendship is there between these two characters. A welcome change of pace is also present with Selma Blair as Liz. She has more fight in her this time, whereas with the first movie Liz was a bit of a wet blanket, and it was obnoxious that such a sad sack could have such power (and she is most certainly the strongest powers-wise). Seth MacFarlene of all people voices a new character, and is a welcome (hilarious) addition. Luke Goss has an interesting and identifiable turn as Prince Nuada (without it feeling forced like with Sandman in Spidey3). Yes he's the villain of the movie, but often it's only by matters of perspective. In his opinion, humans have wasted the planet and I can't argue very well against that. Some issues I could've seen go deeper. Hellboy is working to destroy those similar to himself, when the people he fights to keep safe don't seem to appreciate this. Del Toro skates over this after a scene of introspection.
Overall, the movie is excellent visually even if it's not as brilliantly written as Pan's Labyrinth. It's still very entertaining and quite funny. The freaks are running the show this time around, and the results are a big improvement over last time. B+