Fulltime Casual - An Australian Film and TV Podcast

When someone says to you “let’s watch a film by Guillermo del Toro, it’s a sequel but he wrote and directed it!”, it would be understandable to get a little excited. When they go on to tell you he went crazy with the creature design, and the creature effects were done by Double Negative, then you’re likely to illicit a little squeal of excitement. If the next thing your told is that while its a monster film, its really a buddy flick / action romance / physical comedy, you’re likely to wonder how this related to the guy responsible for pans labyrinth, and what the fuck happened to a once-great director?

Hellboy 2 doesn’t know what it’s supposed to be and so tries to be everything at once, thus makes a mess of it all. It’s taken the elements of the first film that worked and rather than refining or innovating, has decided that more is obviously better - that always works don’t you know. The story is predictable, the inter-species relationships theme kind of revolting, and the acting is cheesier than your high schools end-of-year production. On the plus side the character design is quite typical of del Toros films and well excecuted, although there are times when it feels you’re watching the Jabba scene from the revised edition of Return of the Jedi (you know - the one with the singing), there’s also a pseudo stop-motion scene at the start of the movie that was quite charming. Hellboys’ weapons look like props and the sets tend to look like … well, sets.

Despite some nicely done sections, I really hated this film and what its done to my memory of the first movie. I hated the hideous young Hellboy at the start of the film, and I hated the stereotypical angry wife role that Selma Blairs’ character plays. I was insulted by “Ze Germans!” accent despite not being German, I hate that characters change personality mid-film, I hated the sing-song scene, and I hated that THE FISH MAN NOW BREATHES AIR AND CRIES, DESPITE NOT HAVING TEAR DUCTS! HE’S A FUCKING FISH! WHAT POSSIBLE USE WOULD HE HAVE FOR TEARS GIVEN THAT HE LIVES IN THE WATER?!

I’m sorry but this is the film that turned del Toro from something of an icon into a filthy shark-jumping, fridge-nuking hack. There’s no love in this film, it’s a cynical cash-in movie that Indys the entire franchise (It’s now a verb, just go with it).

1.5 stars, and that’s only be cause the effects houses did such a good job given their tiny budget.