If you show an enormous carving of a fertility goddess in the first reel...

[zustifer]

Hellboy II (2008), Guillermo del Toro. July 12, 8:15pm. View count: One.

Instant review version: Beautiful monsters, obnoxious most other things.

Longer version: This movie had more sheer visual glee moments than any in recent memory (mostly monster-based, mostly Doug Jones in fact), but it also was sadly predictable and just kind of sloppy in a lot of ways. The fightin' team was poorly formed (having two or more team members stand around nervously while Hellboy fights is just a sad state of affairs), the dialog semi-humiliating, and the Big Bad Threat mostly unreadably messy and stupidly incomprehensible.
This is very sad, because, seriously, many of the monsters were primo. And I'd watch Doug Jones eat a sandwich, honestly. But... yes, a mixed bag.

Comments

[sanspoof.livejournal.com]

No, I know. I have also been subjected to his junior film, so I feel your pain.

[unpleasant.livejournal.com]

Hellboy 2: Pretty But Fairly Confused.

What really bothered me is all that each of the main characters (who were not HB) got exactly one or two scenes showing that they weren't always inconsolable boobs. I mean, I know it says "Hellboy" on the jacket but they changed the personalities and circumstances of just about everyone just to further prop up the titular character of what was endlessly passed off as "a team". What's even weirder is that the one singular character who is the fucking godwheel was himself strangely altered to actually NEED the other characters (ie less knowledgeable of the occult, history, or even basic words). What a world. Either let HB be the boss or don't.

I really liked looking at the movie, tho'. Except the HellKid. That was wrong on so many levels.

[sanspoof.livejournal.com]

I agree with every word of this comment.

[unpleasant.livejournal.com]

Speaking of agreement, I agree with your assessment of Doug Jones. I would totally make out with him simply based on the way he moves his hands. His hands are dreamy.

[sanspoof.livejournal.com]

You can seriously pick him out of a crowd by his movements. I like that.

[malconstant.livejournal.com]

Did you notice the repeated (and somewhat non-apropos) appearance of the Old Ones from H.P. Lovecraft's At the Mountains of Madness? They show up on a table in HQ, on a couple of computer monitors, in the background in the troll market... I guess del Toro is still depressed that the studios dropped his bid to do the film adaptation. It's too bad; it might have been the first decent non-comedy Lovecraft movie. I've thought for a while that Mountains would be the best suited for a film. And the shoggoth would be an appropriate avenue for del Toro's apparent fetish for putting eyeballs in weird places.

A slightly disappointing bit was how the Old Ones (if they were indeed Old Ones) were animated; they're radially symmetrical, but when they're walking through the market, they're lumbering like bipeds, limbs moving together like arms and legs.

[sanspoof.livejournal.com]

I _obviously_ need to pay more attention.

[hypercalcium.livejournal.com]

I had big expectations for this to be an improvement over the first one (Since Pan's Labyrinth had been made between them) but it ended up disappointing me in the same way as the first one. I mean, both movies had great individual pieces (The hanged Russian corpse tour guide [from the "The Body" comic] in the first, the I-Del-Toro-like-putting-eyes-in-odd-places fortune teller, the extremely pretty death of the otherwise sort of boring elemental] but it somehow failed to compel. Was it me, or were the characters all trying so hard express their unique attributes that no one seemed very worried about the external threat?
Also, sound design. I've been paying more attention to this for years and years now, but after the incredible Pan's Labyrinth, a Del Toro film had better be astounding. This wasn't the slightest bit compelling, audio wise, same old library sounds.

[hypercalcium.livejournal.com]

Oh and thanks to this post I now know how awesome Doug Jones is. "Hush" being one of the best damn episodes of Buffy.

[sanspoof.livejournal.com]

Oh my gosh yes, I can't believe I forgot to mention how horrible the sound was. The score wasn't so great either, but the sound just hurt.