HELLBOY (DVD)

Director: Guillermo del Toro (Blade II, Mimic)
Starring: Ron Perlman, John Hurt, Selma Blair

Just like the TV series retreads which are so common these days (see Starsky and Hutch above), another overpopulated genre today is the comic book movie. Oh, occasionally there's a winner like Spider Man 2, but most are entirely unremarkable. This one falls much closer to that "ho-hum" end of the scale. The problem is almost always lackadaisical writing, and this is no exception. Rather than bothering to create real characters, the writers give us only showy drawings of characters, like the pictures in the comic books they're born from - a few broad, bright strokes on a flat page. I will admit that sometimes these character cartoons are moderately interesting, like the Hellboy "super-hero" in this movie. He's a cigar-chomping, gun-toting Imp from Hell raised to fight paranormal crime by the US government ... and that's pretty cool. In the end, though, that's just not enough to make up for the second-rate plot. Not too much to this movie, and what there was was usually just broad and shoddily put together. It was occasionally enjoyable, but often forgettable.

Standouts: Interesting enough idea, the whole graphic "novel" thing.
Blowouts: Still nothing more than kid stuff.

Grade: C