MOVIE REVIEW: ‘Hellboy’ another boring comic-book movie
Grade: C-
Here we have yet another action film based on a comic-book series, and another attempt at packing as many computer-generated special effects into a movie as possible.
Yawn.
Is it just me or are these movies based on comic books getting more and more cliché and boring? Don’t get me wrong, I liked the first X-Men movie and loved “X2.” Actually, “X2” is one of the best action movies I’ve ever seen, because it was unbelievably slick in every way.
On the other hand, “Spiderman” wasn’t much more than one scene of a hero flying between buildings on a string, “Daredevil” was basically the same thing without the flying spandex man, “Hulk” was hardly anything but computers generating a character and making him destroy lots of big things because he’s a mad guy … so on and so forth.
Oh yeah, I saw a new movie. Perhaps I will tell you about it.
“Hellboy” starts back in 1944, when the Nazis have some super-advanced technology and try to summon some earth-threatening force. Their attempt fails when the American army rushes in to save the day. After the heroics, a Scottish professor discovers a small, red creature that must have jumped through the portal the Nazis had opened. This little guy turns out to be none other than the comic-book character Hellboy. Hellboy is later trained to use his powers for battling all sorts of interesting creatures that are apparently threatening the human race.
Hellboy could easily talk the monsters to death instead of fighting them, since the writers attempted to make him have all of these clever phrases to say in the middle of some battle sequence. It seems a little weird for someone to be concentrating on what phrase they’ll try out, instead of focusing on how to kill the monster.
Other than possessing a character with witty phrases, a terrible grooming job, big muscles and two hockey pucks glued to the front of his head, this movie isn’t much of anything. The plot has holes all over the place and a majority of the smaller-time characters are as dumb as a brick.
The director, Guillermo Del Toro, reeled off a movie just like all of the other films he directed. He worked on projects such as “Blade 2” and “Bullfighter,” all of which are nothing better than average.
Not only was it mostly made by computers, it was more boring than I had expected. Toward the end, I was hoping the conclusion could save some face, but it turns out it didn’t quite work.
I gave the movie a C- because there were a few spots of editing that I thought were pretty cool. Overall, it’s not something that would leave you gasping for air. It’s also not something you’d leave the theater for, either.
I would recommend seeing this movie in the dollar movies, if anything. One word description: Mediocre.
Brandon Gibson is a freshman majoring in print journalism. Comments may be sent to him at bgibson@cc.usu.edu.