'Hellboy II' Pumps Up The Magic

By Katey Rich

Does any summer blockbuster really have the right to look as fabulous as Hellboy II does? In an era where CGI stands in for anything and everything, and you only need to throw a spandex suit on someone to make them a superhero, you have to wonder why Guillermo del Toro puts the painstaking care and minute details into his vision of a world packed with underworld creatures. Then, of course, you have to thank him dearly for doing it, and making a wildly entertaining blockbuster that, even if it lacks the depth of his breathtaking Pan's Labyrinth, shares the same inspiring visual wizardry.

The story of Hellboy II, which involves a pact between humans and the underworld and an army of brass transformers and all kinds of other hokum, invites a vast menagerie of creatures to come take part, from the central trio of Liz (Selma Blair), Abe Sapien (puppeteer extraordinaire Doug Jones) and Hellboy himself (Ron Perlman) to a giant Jack-and-the-beanstalk figure gone Little Shop of Horrors on a Brooklyn street. Some are CGI, like the monster plant, but most are puppets and prosthetics on humans who are rendered almost unrecognizable within their creatures. One character, the ectoplasmic Johann Krauss, who lives inside what resembles an old diving bell, is played by two people. How??? Never mind, I don't want anyone to spoil the magic.

And that, actually, is the best part of Hellboy II--the idea that there is movie magic at work here that can't be explained through well-placed mouse clicks. OK, Doug Jones isn't actually magical, but the way he moves his arms as Abe, and then transforms into the Angel of Death later on (no, really, that's a character), defies logical explanation. The mixture of the brick-and-mortar wizardry with the standard CGI flair has the wonderful effect of grounding it all in reality, turning off the section of your brain that grumbles, "Oh, well, it's all just CGI." You don't know which part of the movie actually walked the earth, or a soundstage, at some point. That's all the fun.

Hellboy II is funny and adventurous, but it also loses itself from time to time in the faux-mythic language and portentous music that virtually every fantasy movie seems to require these days. But the overall combination favors sheer glee, whether it's Hellboy's tossed-off one-liners or the spectacle of watching a hideous ogre walk down the street. And with relatively little of that glee being digitally manufactured, the satisfaction is all the greater.