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There are a lot of things a
person can do with their free time: masturbate; tie two cats
together, toss them over a laundry line and watch them fight;
put a dollar bill on a fishing line and yank it away from
drunken bums. The list goes on and on. Instead, I chose to
go see "Hellboy."
As it turns out, any activity on the aforementioned list was
much more worthwhile than seeing this film. As a matter of
fact, if I was in a bad mood, I might say "Hellboy' was
a craptacular craptasm of craptastic crapulence. Yes, this
movie put me in a bad mood.
Based on the Dark Horse comic book series by Mike Mignola,
"Hellboy" is set in the final days of World War
II as Hitler's forces uncork a gateway to hell in order to
bring about Armageddon. The portal is eventually closed but
not before a red baby demon slips through. Thankfully, Hellboy's
destiny is changed by nice Professor Broom (John Hurt), and
so instead he spends his time helping the U.S. government
beat the crap out of monsters and sending them back to where
they belong.
"Hellboy," as a movie, really failed to do anything
original. The opening scene was from "Raiders of The
Lost Ark," the demons were right out of "Predator."
Abe Sapien Hellboy’s partner played by Doug Jones, was
Aquaman with slightly more useful powers and a "fishier"
exterior. Hellboy’s love interest, Liz Sherman (Selma
Blair) apparently was a child actor who made another movie
before this one—"Firestarter." Then throw in
a little "X-Men," "Buffy" and "Ghostbusters"
and you have an evening of cold, shitty leftovers.
After throwing in a couple of Nazis and the inexplicable
need for Grigori Rasputin (yes, that Grigori Rasputin) to
open a portal and allow the seven Gods of Chaos to rule the
earth, the audience is left with one question: What the fuck?
I know it’s tempting to see a favorite comic book hero
come to life on the big screen, but there’s a lot to
be said for having some self-control too. Don't be fooled
by misleading, box office returns reflecting the amount of
nerdy comic-book fans who are willing to shell out nine bucks
to see something as craptastic as "Hellboy."
The most frustrating thing about "Hellboy" is that
it has all the elements to be interesting— possibly even
awesome, but it seemed the wires got crossed somewhere. I
imagine the executive producers standing around the set saying
things like, “I didn’t bring the plot. Did you bring
the plot? I thought you were bringing the plot.”
Some people think the movie was making fun of itself, full
of self-deprecating humor and “off-the-wall-exaggerations.”
I think we should be making fun of the movie, instead because
it was a self-defecating piece of crap. Pardon the
redundancy, but it needs repeating. After all, HellBoy’s
love interest has the power to conjure flame right? But the
flame around her is always blue. That makes me think there’s
a pilot light up her ass.
Despite the deficiencies of the movie, I cannot deny that
there were some cool special effects and that it was somewhat
well-acted. I cannot deny that Ron Perlman played a good Hellboy—he
had the persona down pat, and displayed the noir-ish, macho
personality that has made Hellboy a popular comic book in
the first place. The movie was suspenseful in places and appropriately
creepy.
I still prefer the comic book. Not that I'm admitting to
reading comic books.
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Above:
Ron Perlman as "Hellboy."
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