Hellboy II: The Golden Army (2008)

Hellboy II is loose, confident and surprisingly-purely-delightful: one of those pictures that occasionally threatens to tarnish the bad name of sequels. Essentially, when you really get down to it, the picture is the movie you longed for while watching the original-which was stranded between personal kinks and impersonal obligation to be all things X-Men to all people (inevitably canceling itself out in the process). Hellboy II doesn’t add up to much-the plot alternates between derivative (resurrection, baby, etc, etc) and non-existent. But it’s an empowering movie-nothing. The picture is monster vaudeville-and it has-most importantly-a tasty, easy-going tone. This is sugar on sugar, and I confessed that I loved most every minute of Hellboy II: The Golden Army. Some will probably dispute this, but this may be, truly, the picture the Mexican wizard Guillermo Del Toro has always wanted to make-this is the film that drives his hidden, deep down, insecure-gifted-dork’s dreams. The fleeting reference to Bride of Frankenstein isn’t accidental-this picture represents a similar departure in tone from its original, but it even more honestly recalls the difference between Ghostbusters and the more lackadaisical Ghostbusters II. The effects are fine, but Del Toro’s love for movie monsters and comedy bits and characters and throwaway vignettes trumps the requisites of the blockbuster and gets to something more personal and groovy-it’s all fun, no more, possibly less-but you won’t care.

Del Toro’s approach is, after several films, familiar, and it’s become clear that he shares with the old Tim Burton, another obsessive maestro of shadowy creepy-crawlies, a certain weakness: a fundamental inability to weave much in the way of story-his creatures are the entire show. Del Toro’s pictures are, in construction, extremely primitive, episodic and stop and start. Del Toro clearly recognizes this liability and built it into the captivating-anyway Pan’s Labyrinth; he doesn’t have Spielberg’s gift for delirious-seamless plot soars that leave you breathless yet. Del Toro’s pictures never quite take off like we hope from our great fantasies; but they work anyway out of unbridled will and id-out of his illustrator’s brilliance of imagination, out of his ability to forge new monsters out of old and make the costumed man sexy and funky and funny again. Ironically, Del Toro’s most seamless bit of storytelling is probably his least personal, the underrated kung-fu vampire blow-out Blade II.

On paper, Hellboy II is basically Blade II all over again-only warmer- with Del Toro’s character for character’s sake approach softening things. Luke Goss has returned from the Wesley Snipes picture to again assume duties as the villain, and he has essentially the same aim as Prince Nuada that he did as the pallid, heroin chic-ed Nomak in the prior picture-a desire to return his species to the glory that the humans have repeatedly denied them. The Prince is a hunkier, healthier version of Nomak-a Nomak who’s kicked the junk and gone to the gym, and received extremely effective hair care treatment. I can see why Del Toro has returned to Goss-he’s a raspy, unusual, threatening object-and he has a conviction in the material that can’t be faked or laughed off-he wants fairy tale creatures’ rights dammit, and, while Goss is on the screen, you believe little to nothing else. Goss also has chemistry with the other players that might be overlooked, his hatred for Blade and Hellboy registers, and it lends both films a little bit of authentic danger, which they desperately need. (Nuada threatens to kill Abe Sapien at one point, and you, against your knowledge of formula, nearly believe it.)

But, as effective as Goss is, this picture is about the good monsters clowning around and embracing in their inner freak. Del Toro has made a romantic-comedy for the nerds, a rare feel-good outcast fantasy. Many pictures, most Tim Burton and the first Hellboy included, cater to our self-pity bone-our secret fear that the world is rigged against our eccentricities. It’s nice then that The Golden Army drops all of that-it’s saying, whether it even knows it or not, that life goes on and even the ugly have their own pursuits which they even occasionally get to realize. It’s a give and take for everyone kinda picture-everyone gets a moment or two, and most everyone, eventually, wins a love or two. This is a very human, unforced, minor subtext but it gives this new Hellboy a lift.

Hellboy (Ron Perlman) and Liz (Selma Blair) are still involved, but now a bit troubled-the blazing French-kiss that ended the first movie has given way to disappointment and confusion. These two, the fire-proof man and his burning, elemental, uncontrollable woman, don’t really have much to do together; they only seem to be at odds because it would be boring if they weren’t. Perlman and Blair give it something, though it may be an unintentional something, I can’t tell. I felt for both characters the way I feel for many character actors who should be getting more work-I had a sympathy that might not have anything to do with the movie I was actually watching (Paul Giamatti has inspired similar reactions). Both characters are more poignant than they have any right to be-but there’s also a spacey humor between them that keeps things afloat and unpretentious-Perlman and Blair may be actors engulfed in makeup and CG, but they have something (which is why you don’t believe they’re drifting) that stirs your inner fantasy of discovering that weird-cute-girl reading the same comics as you.

Abe Sapien (Doug Jones, in outfit, and also filling in for David Hyde-Pierce’s vocals), our endangered fish-man, (he suggests The Creature from the Black Lagoon crossed with an iguana), also finds love in this picture, with Princess Nuala (Anna Walton), Nuada’s identical twin. This conflict isn’t brought to much fruition either, but Abe gets two of my favorite moments in the picture, a meet-cute with the Princess where she questions his name (Abe, in a bit of self-deflation, acknowledges the ridiculousness of it) and a betrayal that, blinded by love and loneliness and heartbreak, he can’t help but make. Abe was unfortunately sidelined in the first film, and his expanded role here underlines what’s so appealingly flim-flammy about this picture. We also have some sort of vaporous creature called Johann Krauss that resides in what appears to be an old deep-sea diving suit, voiced by Seth McFarlane of the television show Family Guy in an inflection that I’m assuming is meant to recall Col. Klink from Hogan’s Heroes. We also have Jeffery Tambor returning, in yet another role that’s been thankfully expanded since the first adventure.

You may think me haphazard, all over the place-highlighting random bits and performances with no particular rhyme or rhythm. This is the primary problem, and appeal, of Hellboy II: The Golden Army. The picture doesn’t really fulfill much of anything in the way of conventional adventure payoffs, and the episodes feed into one another awkwardly, but this is one of those films where the flaws and the merits walk side-by-side, hand-in-hand, and you get to a point where you really can’t tell the difference anymore (and you don’t want to). Hellboy II is composed of those little character moments you imagine in between the boring plot scenes of most big movies; it has an airy-just-in-it-for-the-fun quality that many of our expensive entertainments lack; so many of our B-movie four hundred million dollar enterprises are so deadly serious; and so determined by their self-doubting creators to be more than they ever could actually be. Hellboy II knows exactly what it is-it’s imaginative kids playing in the yard right after getting out of a big movie-filling in the gaps, floating on impulse-in love with giddy-crazy nonsense.

★★★

Posted on July 14th, 2008 in Reviews, 2008, Fantasy |

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