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Back Shelf Beauties
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Hellboy If you're a single woman looking for a single guy this weekend, get yourself down to the cineplex and buy a ticket to Hellboy. You will find plenty of guys without girlfriends at this movie, which is inspired by a comic book. Sure, they might not be the most eligible bachelors in town, but us nerds need love too. Ron Perlman stars as Hellboy - part Arnold Schwarzenegger/part Beverly Hills Cop/spawn from hell who was summoned into this dimension by a triumvirate of evil towards the end of World War II. As we see in the movie's opening sequence, supposed-to-be-dead Rasputin (Karel Roden), a Nazi occult expert, and a hot blonde babe (Biddy Hodson) joined together to open a portal to the 7 gods of chaos hoping to start a world-wide apocalypse where evil could rise up and rule amid the disaster. However, the Allies stopped them in the middle of their attempt, after Hellboy came through the portal into our world (I feel like such a nerd. Just writing that paragraph guarantees that I will not be able to get a date for at least 6 months). Occult expert Professor Trevor "Broom" Bruttenholm (John Hurt) took the young Hellboy under his wing and raised him to be a superhero with the FBI's secret Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense, which was founded to defeat otherworldly bad guys and troublemakers (the stuff that goes bump in the night and hides in your closet when the lights go out). Now, sixty years later, the triumvirate of evil is back to use Hellboy in their secret plan for world domination, and Professor Broom Bruttenholm and the gang might be overmatched. Can Hellboy, his paranormal partners and the FBI stop them? On the surface, Hellboy might sound like a pimply-faced teen virgin comic book lover's dream, but there is much more to the tale and this movie. Hellboy has an amazing soul and sense of drama that exceeds what you get from most comic book movies. This movie is everything The Hulk should have been. In between the funny one-liners, heroic cockiness and action packed explosions, Perlman, along with writer/director Guillermo del Toro (based on the comics by Mike Mignola), has made Hellboy into an isolated, tragic figure who longs for love, belonging, and understanding. While we expect to be blown away by the special effects, del Toro has blown me away with the heart and soul of this movie by spending a good amount of time focusing on a sad love triangle between Hellboy, the troubled Liz Sherman (Selma Blair) and his new baby-faced FBI handler, John Myers (Rupert Evans). While the words "love triangle" in the middle of a big action flick usually send me running from the theater, del Toro has crafted one that is special because he is smart enough to balance it with some humor that we can all relate to, and he avoids lingering on it, since we can all figure out what is happening in just a few scenes. This story could continue throughout future Hellboy sequels, and gives Perlman a chance to show his acting range. It is wonderful to watch him peal away the character's bravado and show the broken heart. del Toro does a strong job here by letting us in on the silliness of the movie with some well-placed jokes and good action, but Hellboy lacks the kind of huge, explosive climax that you might expect. All of the parts are there, but the climax is not edited well enough, so the action is spaced out too much, and del Toro injects a smidgen too much humor towards the end. That might be nit picking, but I have take off points for it. If this movie does well at the box office this weekend, a new comic book franchise will be born. I hope it rakes in the dough. 3 Waffles (Out Of 4) Copyright 2004 - WaffleMovies.com
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