I had semi-high hopes for this movie even though I didn’t like the first Hellboy at all. But the trailer really took me in, and so I was kind of excited to go. Let’s just say I wasn’t excited about this movie after it was over.

I think I’ll start with what I did like because that list is a lot shorter. The best and most intriguing parts of the movie was by far the CGI otherworldly creatures, most of which can be seen in one version of the trailer or another. This is what drew me to see the movie in the first place, the little ‘tooth fairy’ creatures and the crazy creature that had a dozen eyes all over his wings feathers, to name a couple. These were amazing effects and much time and creativity went into to making these creatures. I also liked Prince Nuada and his twin Princess sister, but I’ll get to that in a bit.

Now for what I didn’t like. The main characters of Hellboy, Liz, and Abe were just totally underdeveloped. I realize this is a sequel and maybe we, the audience, should already have some sort of attachment to these characters, but I sure didn’t. I’m assuming that the creators of the comic intended the character Hellboy to have sort of a cool, tough guy image, but he really just came off as very contrived. And I was constantly distracted by his receding hairline. There were about three B-storylines that were not developed enough for the audience to be the least bit interested in and were certainly not worth adding into the film. The characters were so extremely un-engaging, and that brings me to my next point: as these super hero movies usually do, they threw in a slew of unfunny one-liners for reasons I can’t possibly imagine. The humor was far from funny, not to mention unnecessary. Time that should have been spent developing the characters was wasted by extremely stupid humor.

The battle scenes in the movie were good enough, but having indifferent feelings towards the characters makes the action scenes less exciting because I don’t care what the outcome of the fight is. As I mention above, the best characters were by far the evil Prince Nuada and his good-hearted twin sister. They have a connection beyond that of regular twins. When one is injured, the other feels the exact same pain as if it happened to them. This relationship could have been explored more in-depth, since it was the only one worth watching. Prince Nuada was also the most believable character because actor Luke Goss played the part with such believability (and he is the only reason this movie is getting a grade above the D range.) The other actors, as well as the script, dialogue, and humor (if you can call it that) were just so monotonous that I was bored throughout.

The Bottom Line