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fun and fabulous ~ if you've never seen the first one, get it and watch it first; it'll help contextualize the character relationships. otherwise, this one stands on its own, storywise. lots of action, lots of fun weird creatures, alas too much cgi (but what can you do?). ron perlman is excellent again in the title role and the villain is lovely-creepy in a strange live-action manga sort of way.
two thumbs up if you dig this sort of goofball stuff.
: D
two thumbs up if you dig this sort of goofball stuff.
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Eh. That's all it gets -- eh. And believe me, that's very disappointing, to say the least. I went back and read the professional reviews on RottenTomatoes.com this morning, and I'm wondering if they saw the same movie as me (My actual theory is that, in the same way they let the comedic turn of Hancock's commercials bias them against the movie's true dramatic nature, they let the Shiny of this movie convince them it was better than it is).
There were moments of pretty but most the character development fell really, really flat. I didn't get why Hellboy and Liz were together. Selma Blair could barely act her way out of a bag at times. Hellboy wasn't always likable... Abe's possible romance held a lot of potential, but was never really followed up on. I was expecting something on an epic scale, but... not so much. The singalong scene was good, I'll give them that, but the scenes that followed immediately afterward put the movie down near the new Indy movie in the rankings for the Summer.
The bad guys are never really established as being eeeevil, which is a problem. Maybe I'm a bleeding-heart liberal/environmentalist/fantasy fan, but I didn't see anything that made me think the antagonist was pure evil at heart, which made the response of the good guys seem a little out of balance. No one ever tried to explain why humanity deserved to continue to survive... that left a pretty big hole in the movie. The bad guys state their case, but the defense is never made. And so, I never at any point felt like, "Yes, we have to kick these guys' asses," which, although not necessary in all movies, is really important in an action movie. If you can't make the audience feel that, then you need to explain why the hero does (which they didn't).
Maybe this is a good thing -- it'll force me to get my expectations for The Dark knight back down into the stratosphere. Nothing is a guaranteed success, you know?
If nothing else, this movie gave me a greater appreciation of what Joss Whedon did to a certain character in Serenity. In the climax for that movie, you feel like anyone and everyone could be killed at any moment. In Hellboy II they try to take advantage of that feeling in a moment where a character is near-death, but without the set-up of someone else dying, it completely and utterly falls flat. Instead of being moved, I simply wanted them to get past the obligatory whispers of love and caring and get to the big fight. I can say with a fair amount of confidence that no one expected that character to die, and if that's the case, why do the scene at all, you know?
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as for needing a big reason for humanity to live, i think you're digging way to too deep. love is worth keeping alive. they repeat it a hundred and fifty times.
just enjoy the shiny. i think you are totally over-thinking this one.
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good point about Dark Knight ~ i reeeeally don't want to be disappointed with it ~
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Also on the "can't miss" list is the X-Files. Oh, I can't wait!!! :-)