I know that humor has always had a place within the Hellboy universe, but this felt lazy — cheap. It felt like a string of gags rather than natural comedy being woven into the story. So upon this revisit, I was wondering if my original feelings would still hold weight, or if perhaps I had been too critical before.
Now having seen it again, all these years later, I can safely say that I was right the first time.
Don’t get me wrong, Hellboy II is a perfectly fine watch for a monster driven action comedy that families can enjoy… but it’s a far departure from what made the first film so great. It lacks grit. It lacks intensity. Hellboy II plays more like a Saturday morning cartoon come to life than a gritty action flick with attitude. While my dislike is nowhere near as great as it was when I first watched it, my opinion is improved by only a slim margin.
Written and directed by Guillermo del Toro, I know that his works always stem from a place of real love and fondness for the source material. He’s a filmmaker I trust, and someone whose work I am always looking forward to see. Blade II is a lot of fun, and follows something of a similar path as Hellboy II took, but it worked for me on the strength of the characters. The characters in Hellboy II are reduced to caricatures rather than feeling like actual people existing within the world. And while the creature effects are cool, many of them look really cheap. It’s pretty clear that Toro’s ambitions for the movie stretched further than the budget, and while he made it work for the most part, it’s a pretty big visual downgrade in my opinion.
The relationship woes between Hellboy (played by Ron Perlman) and Liz (played by Selma Blair) serves as a nagging connective tissue throughout the film, attempting to give the gravity of their adventure to stop Prince Nuada (played by Luke Goss) additional emotional weight — but it just doesn’t work. Their interactions are very superficial, never really taking the time to delve deeper into the reasons why they’re bickering. The film reveals that they have some pretty significant things that are happening for them, but it’s all played off for laughs and reduced to a, “hey, what’s your problem” sort of vibe.
The same thing can be said for Hellboy’s yearning to come out of the shadows and be known to the public. It’s touched on that he really wants to come out of hiding, but the BPRD knows that his exposure will lead to potential civil unrest. This aspect is introduced, touched on, but never given any real time to develop or come to a conclusion. And the way everyday citizens are depicted thru out the film is really irritating. For example: There is a big action set piece midway through the film where a giant elemental monster is unleashed on the city and commanded to destroy Hellboy. In the midst of the elemental’s rising, it causes mass destruction by tearing up streets, damaging buildings, and throwing cars every which way. As people run to safety, a woman tries to save her baby in the backseat of her car. Along comes Hellboy who saves the baby, while defeating the monster, all in plain view of everyone around, yet as he goes to return the baby people are accusing him of stealing it, and the mother’s reaction is that of someone so ungrateful, it almost makes you wish Hellboy had just left the baby in the car to be smashed. Painting all normies as little more than racists just doesn’t sit well with me. It feels like, to borrow a professional wrestling term, cheap heat. I expect better.
Oddly enough the film thrives whenever we’re away from Hellboy and his crew. Luke Goss’ Prince Nuada is a great, nuanced character whose motivations undercut his villainy. He’s prideful, yes, but is he wrong in his assessment of humans? I like he’s actually a noble character, doing what he believes to be the right thing, for the right reasons, but having to do so in a horrible way. The action envolving Nuada is fantastic, and the family drama was far more interesting with what little we got, than anything going on with our main characters.
There are other aspects of the film that I could touch on like the love story between Abe Sapien and Princess Nuala, and the addition of new member Krauss (voiced by Seth MacFarlane), but I’m not a fan of any of it, so to prevent this from becoming less review and more roast session, I’ll just say that if you’re on board with this movie by the end of the first act, you should have no problem enjoying the rest of the movie. I was not.
Overall, Hellboy II is a largely forgettable film with moments of glory, but a lot of wasted potential. While this film is nowhere near Toro’s best, it’s still watchable enough. But I doubt I’ll ever watch this one again, as I found it to be devastatingly dumb, which is devastatingly irritating given how much I was originally looking forward to it, and all of the talented people involved making it.
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