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Hellboy II: The Golden Army
How is this any better than The Mummy Returns?
2008
Review: July 22, 2008
Director: Guillermo Del Toro
Starring: Ron Perlman, Selma Blair, Doug Jones, Luke Goss
Made me even more bored and frustrated, but if you’re into it, I say sure.
THE SETUP:
Hellboy and friends fight some elf dude who is going to raise some unstoppable army or whatever.
DISCUSSION:
Now that everyone hates M. Night Shyamalan, I guess Guillermo Del Toro is my new most-hated director. It only bothers me when it seems clear to me that a director’s work is crap, but everyone else seems to think is the work of genius. The first Hellboy was acclaimed and seemed to me unadulterated, incoherent SHIT, and this one, even more acclaimed, in fact considered by some to be among the best films of the year, is—well, more coherent, at least. There’s no totally unrelated thing floating in space that has nothing to do with anything, for what that’s worth.
We open with Hellboy as a child, which I suppose is quite amusing to fans of his character, told the story of the golden army of the title, which involves fairies and elves and goblins. The deal is that one elf broke away from the ranks and wanted to take the world back from the humans, and can do this with the help of the unstoppable army, but first he needs to collect three pieces of a crown and seven General Mills box tops. God I tell you, if I see ONE MORE CGI army charging against another CGI army, I’m going to go on a multiplex shooting spree or something.
Now, in the present day, this Fairy Prince played by Luke Goss [who is the same Luke Goss of pretty-boy 80s dance group Bros, see below], kills his daddy to get his piece of the crown, meaning he only needs one more, the one his sister, who looks exactly like him, has. She takes off to prevent his nefarious plan. Then we’re at this high-powered auction where Goss shows up and unleashes these little things we’ll talk about in a second. Then we join Hellboy and friends in their super-secret lair.
Before ............................................................After
There is fish man Abe, and Jeffery Tambor, and they have a discussion of how Hellboy and his girlfriend Liz are having relationship troubles. As they approach their chamber, the door explodes outward, and we soon find out that Hellboy doesn’t clean up around the house and used her toothbrush to serve cat food. I guess this is supposed to be funny, but the writing and situation is sitcom-level. This is The King of Queens, but with expensive—and utterly superfluous—special effects.
So they go to the auction house, where they are attacked by these tiny mantis-type things called tooth fairies, because they eat teeth. I must admit these were sort of interesting little creatures in both execution and concept. But it soon devolves into the most generic of scenes where our heroes senselessly shoot at individuals of a marauding horde of tiny things—and just as senselessly, this strategy works. We see one human guy get covered in the things and one burrow into his belly, then a second later he’s fine, and gets covered again, and I believe he makes it out of the whole situation okay. I also was a little disappointed that although our heroes are supernatural beings from a special paranormal agency, mostly all they end up doing is shooting guns like anyone from any number or summer blockbusters. And speaking of that, didn’t we just see THIS EXACT SCENE in Indiana Jones and the Desperate Fourth Sequel—but with ants?
So because of Hellboy’s making himself public after the tooth fairies incident, they are assigned a new member of their team, Krauss, who is supposed to be German. This causes tension in terms of chain of command, again written at the sitcom level, between him and Hellboy. They decide that they have to go to the Troll Market, which is located beneath the Brooklyn Bridge, where they see a bunch of odd and creative creatures, which is held up by Hellboy apologists as one of the primary attributes of this movie. Okay, yeah, there are some neat creatures, but when you throw a bunch of money at creature designers, I guess that’s what happens. But truth be told I’m just not enthralled by that sort of thing. One of these things turns into a giant angry plant, and Prince Goss appears to dish with Hellboy about the moral issues involved in killing it [for those puny humans!] because it is the last of its kind. Again, more shoddy storytelling of the kind Del Toro is known for, going for the effect, regardless of whether or not it makes sense: If this plant is the last of its kind, why was it tossed so casually at Hellboy as a defense? If demons toss stuff like that around so lightly, maybe they do deserve to be destroyed. I guess whatever works in that second, huh, Del Toro? Anyway, this exchange makes up 50% of our “theme” content, which is whether denizens of a secret world should remain secret. Once that’s over, it’s back to creature-of-the-moment and fight, explosion, fight, explosion.
So I was pretty sure that the movie was making Abe out to be gay, since he’s effeminate, oohs and ahhs over glassware and leather straps, and “likes” Krauss, who “is very expressive with his hands.” But then he suddenly is in love with the princess. Oh, he likes Barry Manilow, too. This leads to the scene in which he and Hellboy sing along to Manilow, which had the people sitting behind me in stitches, but is again something out of a sitcom, except this time it’s a big red devil singing it. This is after Liz said she was going to leave, part of our “emotional” segments, once more used only for effect, because she never leaves and the whole thing is never mentioned again. This segment is accompanied by an “appropriate” glimpse of a segment of Bride of Frankenstein, which I suppose is interesting to some but that me and my friends just found precious and tacky.
SPOILERS > > >
So it turns out Liz is pregnant, and is about to tell Hellboy while she stands in front of a billboard that says “A Big Decision. Let’s make it together.” Then more of Del Toro’s very favorite thing in life, little floaty fuzzies in the air. Then the princess entrusts Abe with the last piece of the crown, before they leave for Ireland, where the golden army is buried. Around this time it might occur to you that the army might not have been raised at all, a fate everyone agrees spells bad news for everyone, if Abe had only left that last piece back in New York. But then I guess our movie wouldn’t have a big climax. Which I thought was pretty much a washout, anyway. Then a little more sitcom banter and we out.
< < < SPOILERS END
I wouldn’t have as much of a problem with this movie [and all of Del Toro’s movies] if it weren’t so acclaimed. If people were to just say "This is crap, but I like it anyway" I would completely respect that. But let's not pretend it's GOOD. HOW is this any better than The Mummy Returns, or any number of other CGI-overstuffed, pureed narrative, assaultively bombastic blockbuster out there? Furthermore, these characters are just the same old characters as pretty much EVERY mainstream character out there. Liz is the feisty woman who is good with a gun and generally unhappy with her man, although we never find out what her real problem was. Hellboy is the wisecracker with a heart of gold. Abe is the smart one who is a little gay-seeming. It’s the same old shit, just with new costumes. Maybe there is supposed to be interest because their demons that bicker just like sitcom characters? And spout sitcom-level dialogue? I honestly just don’t get it.
I think ultimately it comes down to whether you like fairies and goblins or not. I don’t, but I can think of any number of other similar movies that have themes I like that I am more lenient toward. Although now, when I actually try to think of one specific movie as bad as this one that made me put my critical faculties on hold and allowed myself to think was better than it actually was, I actually can’t think of a specific one.
After the movie my friends and I were discussing the way this movie doesn’t have actual “themes” or “emotional moments” or “thoughtful moments,” but just pauses in the action that, when accompanied by the appropriate music, let viewers know that this is supposed to be the emotional part and that is supposed to be the thematic part. And I was reminded of the conclusion of the “AMC First Look” infomercial that preceded the film, where they told us that we, my audience, was “the first” to find out about some new TV series with Benjamin Bratt, and then got an “exclusive” look into the female-fronted crime dramas of TNT, and you wonder: “WHAT do they mean by that?” What does it mean when a mass-produced infomercial that is being shown all month to millions of people across the county simultaneously, tells each audience that it is “the first” to hear about this show [that has been incessantly advertised everywhere for the previous two months]? I guess you’re just supposed to have a general feeling of exclusivity and specialness, without thinking too deeply about what words actually mean. It’s the same thing with this movie. Here’s the “emotional” part. Here’s the “intellectual” part. Here’s the literary reference. This is a “good” movie, while The Mummy Returns is a “bad” movie.
I guess we all end up believing advertising at some point.
SHOULD YOU WATCH IT?
If you’re into this sort of thing.
