Director Guillermo del Toro has been working on his imagery since "Pan's Labyrinth," and his latest work, "Hellboy II: The Golden Army," has an impressive collection of his signature creepy crawlies. But rather than inspiring nightmares, the creatures stir up a mixture of amusement and awe.
"Hellboy II" owes more to Jim Henson's "Labyrinth" and to the Brothers Grimm than it does to the Lovecraftian darkness that inspired the first film. Of course, the darkness is still there. The film opens with the high-society attendees of a Sotheby's-style auction being attacked by tooth fairies - so-called because they eat teeth, or anything else that contains calcium in the human body.
Like the first film, much of the first half of the movie is earmarked for laying out the groundwork for the second half. One begins to wonder if perhaps they've made a mistake in buying a ticket - right until two of the protagonists launch into a drunken duet of a 1950s love song. That's where the movie kicks in the afterburners and takes off.
Thematically, the movie is a character study on what it means to be human - or rather, what it means not to be human. Hellboy spends most of his life seeking acceptance from the human world despite the fact that he is meant to destroy it. The Elf Prince Nuada - the antagonist of the film, who's far more interesting than previous "Hellboy" villain Rasputin - doesn't seek acceptance in a human-dominated world but rather equality. Unfortunately, to him the best way to gain equality is to destroy every last bit of the human world.
While no one is likely to win an Academy Award for the acting in this film, it far exceeds the standards of the typical comic book movie. Ron Perlman is back as Hellboy, and he fits the role so well that it's a little weird to see him in the real world sans red skin, tail and horn stubs. Selma Blair continues in her role as slightly unbalanced pyrokinetic Liz Sherman. Doug Jones is perhaps the most entertaining in the film as Abe Sapien, a 150-year-old fish-man who can read minds. Rounding out the cast are Luke Goss as Prince Nuada and Seth MacFarlane as the voice of the ethereal Johann Krauss, a German scientist who had a little accident involving a séance and is now forced to inhabit a mechanical suit.
The special effects are a delight in this film. Everything has a look to it that is almost too real, dipping into the uncanny valley just a bit. The tooth fairies are alternatively too cute for words, and absolutely terrifying - and they stand about three inches high. Hellboy's tail moves a lot more realistically than it did in the first film, and Liz Sherman's pyrokinetic displays look like real flame rather than the obviously computer-generated fire she had the first time around. Everything just looks better.
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Overall, the film succeeds on all levels. It's reasonably well-acted, it looks good, and though del Toro's directing style is to build things up slowly, it pays off well.
If this is what we have to look forward to with del Toro directing the upcoming "The Hobbit" and its sequel, we should be excited.
"Hellboy II: TheˇGoldenˇArmy"
Grade: A-
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