Hellboy (2019)

THE ROAD TO HELL IS PAVED WITH GOOD INTENTIONS...

HELLBOY ... where to begin. Well lets do some history here, right put down the cells, put out the notepads and pencils (do kids even still use pencils in school?) and lets all turn to chapter one, page one... and then there was HELLBOY. A cool foul mouthed, attitude filled child of Hell that chooses to fight for good, with a big stone hand, ever growing horns, and a big handgun.

The stuff of comic Legend! And then Way back in the not-so-long-ago... a Director by the name of THE GUILLERMO DEL TORO created a pretty dang awesome big screen version anchored by the crazy good performance of Ron F yes Perlman as the title character. Then the sequel came out a week ahead of "The Dark Knight" and was all but forgotten about at the box office... and now not that long after we have a spiderman like reboot... with a fraction of the budget, a fraction of a fraction of the heart... and well... here we go...

Your plot... Evil Queen gets resurrected and decides to conquer the world for Monsters and has her sites set on HELLBOY To rule besides her. Or under her. Or behind her. Sex? Not sure. Anyway. Thats it.

Well, this kaka sure as HELL (heh) aint my fault

Ok. This is not a bad movie. I mean its not good but its not horrible. The problem really is as simple as this... well ok it's two things. 1. Catering to Comic fans is awesome, in fact IT SHOULD HAPPEN MORE, however when you simply put things to put them in, without restructured them to fit a film narrative, you are asking for a disconnect to happen. And it does. It doesn't matter how much I felt things like - I bet thats right form a comic... it didn't help the fact that it didn't work on screen together.

I will give you an example... one of the secondary characters communicates with the dead by essentially puking up their insides that then form a floaty gut like representation of the dead person she is chatting with. Now, I bet you that looks great in a comic book, in fact without looking into it at all (so I could be wrong) I bet that is exactly what it looked like in the comic. But when you have a small budget (a preview of my second issue) perhaps crap CGI floating intestines is not the best way to go. You could say have this character puke up a black pile, that pools - in practical - then have the dead character rise up out of this pool in some practical representation of their dead selves... and boom. No expensive CGI needed and you have a waaaaaaaay better looking scene.

Hollywood call me - I'll fix you.

Hopefully that made sense.

Problem #2. The aforementioned budget. I heard this film had a 50 million dollar budget. Ok not every film needs the 300 million of a marvel flick - BUT - if that is what they were getting... someone had to sit down and rewrite this script. Period. The set pieces asked for by the script simply could not be down justice with that budget. Some of the scenes are downright BBC TV level. That is not against the director or the tech wizards that i'm sure worked their asses off here... they simple were trying to kill seventeen birds with one stone.

The HELLBOY this time around is portrayed as kind of a pissed off adolescent, which isn't a bad choice per say... but when you but almost no backstory into this flick - because you figure your audience will somehow be up on all things hell boy - it makes it hard to connect with the dynamic. I mean but main sub characters in this film have a kid you not a 30 second backstory.... it's rare for me to say this but... you needed more story here, and less plot. HELLBOY is a dark, cool, and sometimes emotional, fantasy tale... trying to repackage it as a B action movie... was another poor choice.

I honestly didn't even remember these characters names after the movie ...

Like I said it's fun. It's not horrible. I don't want to tell you do not see this. I think it's a decent time. In fact my Brother said after the movie: "I didn't hate it, but I won't remember anything about it by the end of the month".

And that really does sum in it up. In todays world of spectacle films fighting for your money every weekend... it just does nothing to stand out. And I for one was BUMMED. I love this character. I enjoyed the actor playing him. But everything about this film, as a finished project, feels "Meh".

ONE LINE MOVIE REVIEW: WHELMED. 

Movie scale: 2.5 out of 5 stars
Fantasy/comic scale 2/5 out of 5 stars. 

I think I'll just stick to the original film for my future Hellboy Televised needs.

Till next BOONIACS!

#Hellboy
#Hellboy2019review

-CBB