I was not looking forward to this. I’d rewatched the Ron Perlman/Guillermo del Toro ones recently, and after seeing the trailers, I had concerns. Perlman is a big goofball, but the trailers made this Hellboy seem very gruff and serious. Then the reviews came out and they were hellish. And on top of that, I started to get sick earlier in the day I’d planned to go. Something had been going around at work, and it was apparently my turn on Fri. I was determined to go to Disney the next day, so I chugged so much Gatorade. I took a quick nap before the movie, then felt okay enough to make the trip. Maybe it was something in the Gatorade, but I didn’t completely hate the movie.
Is there a plot? I don’t know. Something about a witch being dismembered and King Arthur was involved. Look, I’ll just come right out and say it. This movie is dumb. It’s very poorly written, with bad expositional dialog and strangely twisting plotlines. I think this is what most people aren’t able to get past.
I felt like I had just enough that I could work around that. The fight scenes looked GREAT! They had some rock music playing underneath (songs I didn’t recognize, prolly to save money) and they had great personality. I also really liked the supporting characters played by Sasha Lane and Daniel Dae Kim. If anything, it took too long to get to those guys.
As far as David Harbour, he was pretty good. Still no Ron Perlman, but I liked him. I’d been concerned he wouldn’t have the humor, but that was the one thing that consistently worked throughout the film. One liners all over the place, and it did feel like Hellboy had that adolescent mentality I worried he’d be mising. Maybe we could get a condensed version of the film that just had the fights and the banter?
Hellboy – \m/ \m/ \n