Hellboy

I went to see Hellboy this afternoon. I went to the theater wanting to see any of four movies out now that I've yet to see, and Hellboy was the closest to the starting time.

I liked it.

If you've read Mike Mignola's comic, I don't think you'll be that disappointed, either.

If you haven't read Mike's comic....it's not hard to catch on. One of the strengths of the movie is that it doesn't drown you in exposition. It keeps a light tone, and is slow enough in the beginning for you to catch on.

Another of the positives is that Hellboy was one of director Guillermo del Toro's dream projects. He was a fan of the character. He scripted the movie, so it benefits from not having been re-written by seventeen different writers, none of them familiar at all with the character.

The movie's fun. It's popcorn. It has good action, nice special effects, and a couple of great laugh moments.

Ron Perlman made an excellent Hellboy.

As comic adaptations go, this is a good one. Much better than last year's League of Extraordinary Gentleman, which was to Alan Moore's source material what Totino's Pizza Bites are to a nice Chicago-style deep dish. Yeah, there's bread, sauce and meat, but it's really kind of insulting to call it pizza.

Del Toro respects the material, without crossing the line of having the characters take everything too seriously. The movie doesn't pull a Matrix, and get so bogged down in its mythology that it becomes virtually unwatchable. That's important. The mishmash of writers on League didn't respect the material, yet had the characters within it take themselves and the situation entirely too seriously.

The bad on the movie:

I will say that editing was a problem. I think (I hope) quite a bit got cut out to make it more palatable for theater start times. A couple of characters (the main villain being one of them), kind of show up for a few seconds at a time, and then disappear for quite a long time. That was a bit annoying.

Also, a couple of relationships suffer by being cooked too quickly. Agent Myers is kind of the neophyte character brought in to be kind of a friend/government liason to the paranormally empowered Hellboy....and within three minutes of screen time of their having met, Myers is fretting over the potential danger to his newfound friend like they've known each other their whole lives.

But on the whole, I enjoyed it. Don't go in expecting a whole bunch. Eat popcorn.

And get there on time, dammit! Theaters aren't going to wait for your slow ass to get into the theater to start the movie.

And if you're late, don't stand in front of somebody who's trying to actually watch the movie.

But that last part doesn't have much to do with the actual movie. Just my experiences.

Lastly, here's the Good Thumb's review. He makes a point about a leap of faith the viewer has to make involving a transition from one action-packed scene to the beginning of the next, somewhat less action-packed scene.

Selma Blair character is pyrokinetic, and she clears a room of helldawgs with her pyro-power....and then it just kind of jumps to the next scene....I think this may have been another editing problem. But it is one point where I started to think....waitjustadamnminnit....but I pretty quickly blew it off.

Eeb gave it 3 1/2 stars.