Hellboy 2: The Golden Army
If you’d told me six months ago that one day I’d have to buy a ticket and sit in the cinema for two hours watching Hellboy 2: The Golden Army, then I’d probably have developed a sudden worried look of impending torture and then made a gesture something like this…
The "Get me out of the cinema!" signal.
So how come I willingly saw Hellboy 2 last night then?
Well, being the sucker for punishment that I am, I re-watched the original Hellboy a couple of nights ago. My take home memory after watching that the first time was that it was full of nazis, a giant red hand and all-round general rubbishness. I really didn’t like it.
After a second viewing though, maybe that’s unfair - it wasn’t that bad. Or maybe I’ve just seen so many more far worse films since then, that my bar for a half decent flick has just been set much lower. Meh.
Anyway, with my enormous disliking of the original somewhat blunted, I was nicely prepared to hate the sequel instead. Which leads me nicely onto Hellboy 2.
Well, shock, horror… it wasn’t that bad either. It had some mildly amusing moments, some pretty good effects and was a bit like watching the cinematic lovechild of Men in Black and The Mummy - with one of its grandparents being Ghostbusters.
"and this, Mr Goss, is for inflicting Bros on us."
But that one paragraph above is about as excited as I can get about it. You see, ultimately it’s predictable, seemed longer than it actually was and came laden with cheese in places. And we’re not talking about just normal cheese here, but some real whiffy vomit inducing parmesan.
Would I recommend it? Well if I’m honest, no, probably not. Like the first, it’s just all too forgetable beyond the big red hand thing, but that said - it ain’t the worse film to hit the cinema lately. Catch it when it comes on telly instead - which I’m sure will happen when Hellboy 3 comes out (because they’ve opened more than enough blatant plot lines for it).
6/10.
I actually think that is a pretty fair review. I didn’t enjoy it as much as the first one, though I thought that visually it was more impressing. There was way to much cheese in it I agree and yes you could see how it was going to end right from the beginning, but then you can say that about a lot of things. Personally I thought the best bit in the whole film was right at the beginning when Hellboy is told the story of the golden army and it is played out using rag doll characters. I could honestly have watched a whole movie like that, I thought it was a very clever way of doing it.
Over all I think I agree with your 6/10 rating.
I have not watched it though I will say that the visual effects looks so good, as I would expect from the creature of Pans Labyrinth.
I meant to say creator not creature doh!!!
\hmmm… Hellboy Mayonnaise