Hellboy II: The Golden Army
2008
Directed by: Guillermo Del Toro
Story by: Guillermo Del Toro and Mike Mignola
Starring: Ron Perlman, Doug Jones, Selma Blair, Seth MacFarlane
It’s usually kind of hard for me to review comic book movies. On the one hand I consider myself a real critic, having to turn an analytical eye to art and not let preconceptions or prejudices overly color my reports. On the other hand, I’m a huuuge geek, and that can at times blind me to the faults of what is on some levels fan service. Christ, it took me six months to admit that Spider-Man 3 was a bad movie. So I’m almost always torn between my academic rigorousness and my fanboy prostelyization.
The Hellboy franchise is a different kettle though. I barely knew anything about the series until it’s 2004 movie premier, and don’t to this day. Usually I’m not one for boasting about ignorance, but I feel it lends veracity to the following statement: Hellboy II: The Golden Army is pretty friggin’ awesome.
Despite the fact that Golden Army plays a little more fast and loose than the original Hellboy, I’m prepared to call it the superior movie. First off, Golden Army’s story is quite more ambitious, dispatching the Nazis and Lovecraftian tropes that are by now ubiquitous in pop culture and going for a dark gritty fairy-tale with lots of bizarre visuals, references and sounds. All the fey folk speak ancient Celtic, fairy stories and legends are given the scary old-school treatment (the Tooth Faires in particular are terrifically gruesome.) Del Toro’s work on Pan’s Labyrinth is expanded ten fold here as he builds a beautiful, alien and disturbing alternate world in the dark forgotten corners of man’s world. If the Troll Market is any indication of what we can expect from a Del Toro helmed Hobbit, I am officially on the bandwagon.
You get the sense throughout the whole picture that Del Toro was given much more leeway to play with this universe, and it pays off in full. Carrying itself a little more lightly but taking the premise none the less seriously, Golden Army is just more fun than Hellboy. I dare you, I double dog dare you, I defy you to not break into song with Abe and Red during a heart-felt rendition of Can’t Smile Without You. Can’t do it.
There are a few weak points to the picture, of course. Seth MacFarlane’s performance as the voice of Johanne Krauss, the ectoplasmic FBI agent is a little spotty, never finding a level or direction in writing or delivery, and the lack of the Meyers character was missed, at least by me. Some people also might not like that this sequel is just…not sillier, but goofier than the first, if you kennit. Me though, I applaud Del Toro and crew for going out on a limb and making a thrilling, undour, just plain fun comic book movie. Hell, a fun geek movie at all. We need more of that.
