Movie Review: Hellboy II

Last night I finally saw Hellboy II: The Golden Army. I give it an A- because it was very enjoyable, but somewhat predictable.

The basic plot of the Hellboy series interests me a lot. Hellboy was brought to earth as a cute little baby demon by the Nazis in 1944. He was taken from the Nazis by American forces and raised by Professor Trevor Bruttenholm, a researcher of paranormal events. As he grows up, Hellboy fights the forces of evil and weird, despite sort of belonging to both categories. I think that is what I like most about Hellboy. He is interestingly conflicted between his evil nature (we find out a few times in the movies and probably more often in the comics that it is his destiny to destroy the Earth) and his good desires.

Anyway, The Golden Army was really good. It had what I found lacking in the first film (a wider variety of monsters for Hellboy to fight), and still managed to keep the B-movie tone despite a much bigger budget.

Probably the best gag for me was set up at the very beginning and the punch line was close to the end (I tend to like this kind of joke for some reason). When Professor/Dad Bruttenholm is telling a 10-year old Hellboy the legend of the indestructable Golden Army, Hellboy asks him what "industrable" means. The Professor corrects him and explains what indestructible means. At the end, when Hellboy is beating up the giant mechanical army, you hear him say "Industrible my ass!"

There is also a great scene where Hellboy and Abe get drunk, listen to love songs, and both talk about their girl problems. That gives us this bit of dialogue:

Hellboy: She's my... she's my whole, wide w... I would... I would give my life for her. But she also expects me to do the dishes!
Abe: I would die and do the dishes!

And this little gem:

Hellboy: She's still mad at me, you know. And it's not about the mess, either, it's about something else.
Abe: Well, why don't you just ask her?
Hellboy: No! Because when a woman's mad at you, but she's really mad about something else, and you have to ask, she gets mad because you had to ask in the first place! You know?

Ah, yes, it was a great movie.