visuals - A+ plot - D

Rating: 6/10 (14 July 2008)

To start, I LOVED HELLBOY! It's one of my favorite comic book movies (Ironman is my favorite) so I was really excited to see H2, but I left sort of confused. There were parts I loved and parts that just seemed like they belonged in a different movie. The plot is completely schizophrenic, one minute a drama, the next a comedy; one minute it's beautifully paying homage to ancient earth religions, the next it's slap stick and silly. And, the characters weren't exactly consistent either. In the first movie, Abe was an intellectual, brilliant but nerdy, sweet but not sappy. Supposedly the same actor played him in this movie but I couldn't even recognize him as the same character. Plus, there's a new character who is ridiculous, he's so unbelievable and useless as a plot device that if you took him out entirely, the movie wouldn't be any different.
Just to show you how bad this was (especially in comparison to the first one) and how disappointing, I figured out how the movie would end less than half way through. Hellboy was a little predictable but the characters made it worth it; this was just so formulaic it was sad.
I'm so disappointed, this could have been amazing but it wasn't.