Hellboy: The Golden Army (2008, USA)

As popcorn movies go, Hellboy 2 delivers the goods pretty well. Despite an overstuffed plot and some attendant holes, everything makes about as much logical sense as you would expect a movie about a crime-fighting demon from hell to. Primarily, I'm delighted to see Ron Perlman step back into the role of Hellboy - even with a face entirely covered in latex and red paint, Perlman is the only actor I can imagine in the role. Dispensing this time with any real human perspective, Hellboy 2 follows the team of freaks from the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense as they seek to track down a fairy prince determined to resurrect the human-crushing Golden Army. (Despite the sound of "fairy prince", this guy can kick some serious ass.)

The best and the worst thing about Hellboy 2 is how it looks. As I mentioned, for the second installment Guillermo Del Toro has dispensed with a human protagonist, and along with it, any real grounding in the world of man. Humans here do little more than scream and run away, and even the awesome Jeffrey Tambor is pretty much put on the shelf by the time the real action gets going. Hellboy 2 is immersed in the world of demons, fairies and trolls, with Del Toro exercising his creature-concepting skills to their fullest - it's like the original Hellboy has merged with the fantasy sequences of Pan's Labyrinth. All this gorgeousness and grotesquery - the troll market, Tooth Fairies, the Golden Army itself - makes for a visual feast, but it also weighs down the action sequences. When there's so much to look at and so many details to play with, it becomes harder to block out action sequences that don't look entirely like cartoons. There's nothing here as adrenaline-pumping as Hellboy 1's fight scene in the New York Subway.

However, there are also a lot of other things going on, including two half-scetched romantic plot lines. I wish they'd made a decision on one or the other - either would have worked just fine, but the desire to include both feels half-assed - seventeen-year old boys aren't exactly going to line up for a movie about inter-creature relationships, in any case. I did like how that instead of starting from scratch, like many action and fantasy sequels do when it comes to romance, Del Toro took Hellboy and Liz (Selma Blair) to a new stage of their relationship. Unfortunately, now that she's got a handle on her powers, Liz doesn't have much to do except look exasperated with Hellboy for being kind of a crappy boyfriend, and Blair looks pretty depressed throughout. It's a bummer that the filmmakers couldn't come up with some better female story arcs, but at least they managed to fit in a Barry Manilow duet. Which is not to be missed.