Let me sweep the dust from this forgotten title, Hellboy II: The Golden Army, and give some impressions now that I cant possibly watch Dark Knight again without becoming The Blogger – a villain that trolls the internet punishing more popular rivals by diverting their links to the Kathy Bates nude scene from About Schmidt or the Oprah sex scene from Beloved. You thought the Joker was bad.

Hellboy passes the first test for being a genre mash up that I can stomach. I usually hate these from the dilution they create – the way a cell phone with a toaster function would be great at neither allowing communication (burning your ear and getting crumbs on your clothes) nor browning bread (now smeared with melted plastic). This example of contemporary dark fantasy achieves this by down playing the setting’s modernity. Hellboy’s New York feels like the thirties version, the way that Gotham is often portrayed, and is a very faint backdrop for the action.

Director Del Toro takes us to the horrific underside quickly where trolls and goblins in seclusion from mankind sell magic artifacts and medieval monsters. The movie begins with a Tim Burton style animated back-story of the war between elves and men. Not hottie hot Tolkein elves but these bleached out faeries more akin to drow. Indeed, the main antagonist is a revenging Drizzt-like warrior elf Prince out to destroy man for dominating the supernatural world using a Golden golem army. The visuals that he made famous in Pan’s Labyrinth are brought to Hellboy, though not as gritty as that fairy tale – since it is a comic flick.

More of the heroic freak drama is brought in this installment as demonic HB, amphibious Abe Sapien, burning girl Liz fight to save humanity while being rejected by them. They’re joined by a new team leader in the form of a German ghost whom wears a pressure suit because obviously he would cost too much to render in gaseous form in all scenes. There’s a scene where the elf prince appeals to Hellboy being an outcaste yet fighting for we lazy ass ingrates against essentially his own kind. The city is attacked by this rare last of it’s kind plant monster and HB must decide where he stands, is he man … or monster … he blows it’s bulb head off with the oversized two-inch caliber “Big Baby”, it dies prettily and we proceed with the story.

The fairy tale feel of Hellboy sets it apart from every other comic movie in the past decade and makes it novel in a clichéd way. It’s entertaining to the eye, but not a brain churner or heart tugger. The characterization is ok -but nothing new aside from giving Abe a bit more story time. Wry humor is inserted to good effect to re-familiarize us with the cast, but by the second plot turn you remember why you forgot them. All in all it’s a nice visual snack but if you can wait for DVD, do so – I wouldn’t be shocked if it dropped next week.

In the meantime, I’m reading Watchman – so I too can get the hard nipples and enjoy its trailer as nerd porn.

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