I’ve been expecting someone to post on this all week. Since no one has, I’ll clear the decks before the Dark Knight comments appear (sadly I’m in Europe, where it doesn’t open for another week or so, so I’m looking forward to hearing your reactions). I was very enthusiastic about the second Hellboy right after watching it; a week on and I’m a little less enthralled. Still, this is the most visually inventive and lush movie I have seen in a long time. Setting aside plot, character and dialogue, the movie is worth watching just for the endless delight of its imagery. There is a forest god straight out Princess Monokoke, a bustling troll market that looks better than anything George Lucas managed, a character who is entirely gaseous, and a massive mechanical army, complete with cogs and clockwork machinery.
The movie itself is perfectly fine. The leads play off each other well, with Selma Blair particularly good. There is one wonderful scene involving a Barry Manilow song. But you watch this primarily to drink in the imagination of Guillermo del Toro.
We saw this last night, and left besotted with exactly the lushness–the overstuffed treasures of its design and imagery–Chris notes. But I don’t think Arnab was as taken…he’ll speak for himself shortly, I’m sure.
I could complain a wee bit about the occasional jostling of tones in certain performances and scenes. Perlman as Hellboy handles the tightrope walk between adolescent jocularity and fabulous emotional depth with so little heavy lifting that you forget how odd and difficult such balancing can be. del Toro’s got such grace, too, and in this sequel has the studio capital to invest in as lovingly weird a vision as I’ve seen in some time (wearing the guise of a wisecrackin’ superhero flick). But poor Jeffrey Tambor jumbled my sensibilities every time he wandered on screen, and Selma Blair just isn’t given as much room to dance, and there are other stray details that aggravated.
But then Johan Krauss, voiced with perfect movie-German stiltedness by Seth MacFarlane, marches about in a suit constantly whirring, clacking, and hissing gases, or an opening bit of backstory exposition is played out by a gorgeous set of puppets, or the tooth fairies unleashed are equally horrifying and beautiful and funny and strangely touching. There’s just so much going on, I could get lost in the world, and not worry too much about some of the clunkier details of the story.
I’m off to Batman today, with Kris. I’ll try to get a post up over the weekend.
yes, i was less taken with it, but i did enjoy it. the things i did not like so much:
1) the relationship between blair and perlman felt too sitcommy to me. the film as a whole felt like it was pitched too much like a regular superhero/action movie for the whole family; it just wasn’t very dark at all. in fact, it often reminded me of men in black–perhaps because of an early scene in the b.p.r.d headquarters that seemed straight out of those movies.
2) the visual effects were wonderful but often got in the way of story logic. the forest god sequence, for example, was stunning, but i’m not sure why the super warrior elf prince (who apparently spent his millenia of exile at the shaolin temple) didn’t just grab his sister to begin with. and why didn’t he attack hellboy while he was perched on the neon sign instead of talking to him? i mean, he did already tell plantman to kill him, so why not attack him while he was distracted.(also, why did he leave the b.p.r.d headquarters without checking all the blue books for the piece of the crown? and how did he leave?)
3) jeffrey tambor was one of the best things about the first movie and one of the worst things about this one.
4) very weak villain. the first movie had rasputin and a mechanical nazi ninja–how can you top that?
5) if the film didn’t hit a consistently dark tone, its tender moments too didn’t resonate. there’s nothing here like the wonderful scene in the first film where hellboy follows liz sherman and myers across rooftops, and eavesdrops alongside a little boy.
6) why was the long gangly creature from pan’s labyrinth hanging out in the underground city at the end?
“sadly I’m in Europe”
yes, right, john! poor chris, he missed the world opening week of dark knight. kiss our collective asses, chris, and bring back twiglets, the 150g bag, please.
But Gio, I’m in Italy (Florence right now) so would you prefer something a little more sophisticated than twiglets? I seriously considered going to see Dark Knight here, but it is not subtitled and my family seemed to think it was a better use of our time to see the Duomo. So, yes, pity me.
fuck you, chris. and sure, can i have some tarallucci cookies made by mulino bianco? simon would like a bag of ritornelli, also mulino bianco. thank you.