Hellboy II: The Golden Army

Review

This season’s crop of computer-generated superhero blockbusters has been more than decent (even the shambolic Hancock has a good gonzo moment or two in the first half), but am I the only one who’s jaded by the sight of special effects throwing other special effects through walls? Two more biggies open this week, Hellboy II: The Golden Army and Journey to the Center of the Earth, and both have modest charms—enough to overcome my CG-ennui for at least a few scenes. The first is Guillermo del Toro’s busy follow-up to his comic-book saga about a little devil (literally) who grows up to be a big devil (Ron Perlman) and fight squiggly FX while chomping on stogies. Hellboy’s persona is a parody of macho action heroes, but because of the red skin and horns and tail he’s forced to live in an underground government lair with a lot of fellow mutants—not a happy place for a natural-born hell-raiser. The original worked because Del Toro is a fan-boy who exults in both his hero’s crash-and-bash potency and his morbid spiritual dislocation. (He has always had a thing for subterranean caverns.) In the sequel, Hellboy and his darkly neurotic squeeze (Selma Blair)—she flames up when she’s mad—are at each other’s throats, while a white-faced demon prince (Luke Goss) with a mean martial-arts blade kills a lot of people with particularly nasty FX. Amiable fish-man Abe Sapien (Doug Jones) falls for the prince’s blonde sister (Anna Walton) and they all end up in Scotland fighting bigger FX. The best scene is when Hellboy and Abe get drunk and sing out raucously, which after Hancock suggests a trend toward superhero alcoholism. The economy? — David Edelstein

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New York Magazine Reviews

• David Edelstein's Full Review (7/14/08)