Saturday, July 12, 2008

YOU'RE IN LOVE. HAVE A BEER: Sound advice, and all the more persuasive when it comes from a bright red Ron Perlman in 70lbs of latex demon suit, sporting a hairdo that’s half sumo wrestler and half renegade motorcycle gang, wielding a silver six-pack of product-placed Tecate like on old hand at inebriate front porch philosophizing. It’s all the more amusing in a summer blockbuster when the ensuing sing-along is interrupted by a stabby, malevolent elf ninja.

Yes, in case you had not noticed the theme currently playing at full volume on the Summer Movie Hypetrolux 9000, know now that Hellboy II opened in theaters yesterday. And while we have a “trust, but verify” approach to the Hypetrolux around here, even with films we’re predisposed to love, like this one, and while we expect that it was really just shaking of the rust and limbering up for the long Dark Knight of hyping that is in store this coming week, we are pleased to report that for Hellboy II you can, mostly, believe the hype.

Hype has been focused primarily (and justly) on director Guillermo del Toro and Hellboy Ron Perlman. There has also been much mention of the purported “environmental” bent of the film, but mostly to the effect that you shouldn’t worry about it being such a preachy downer of a tale that the dying oceans or accelerated extinction of the world’s bird species winds up ruining the simple joy of doing battle with an army of monsters who’ve finally rebelled against the evolving disorder of things. Here, it suffices to say that this theme does exist, and provides for one truly stunning and beautiful CGI sequence in which a forest elemental is vanquished on a non-existent street corner in Brooklyn.

Depending on your age and inclinations, your earliest memories of Perlman may be as cat-faced Vincent, opposite Linda Hamilton the late-80s romantasy series Beauty and The Beast, or as the hunchbacked heretic Salvatore from the Sean Connerized / Christian Slaterated movie version of Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose. In this house, we remember him first and always as nose-picking Zeno from The Ice Pirates (1984, feat. Robert Urich, Angelica Houston, John Matuszak, John Carradine and Bruce Vilanch, for crying out loud). Zeno’s paradox? Perlman was permitted to reprise the role in Alien: Resurrection.

The hype around Perlman is that Hellboy is the role he was born to play and that he’s amazing in it despite being 105 years old. This is half right. He’s damn good as Hellboy, and only 58, but he has brought charisma and intensity to many, many characters over the years, in small projects and large, good films and stinkers, and it feels unfair to endorse hype (even high praise) that ties him to this single role in any limiting fashion. Besides, he seemed like he might have had more fun playing Hellboy the first time around. Perhaps because expectations weren’t quite as high?

Speaking of high expectations, hypewise, Guillermo del Toro emerged into the limelight in 2006 with the richly deserved success of Pan’s Labyrinth. The Hypetrolux has since been attaching words like “visionary” and “spellbinding” too his name at every opportunity, often willfully ignoring his pulpy work on Blade II — including the frank and mirthful director’s commentary he provides on the DVD version. (If you like the genre, and director’s commentaries, this is a can’t miss.) He seems to have endorsed the refrain in numerous Hellboy II reviews that his work has straddled a divide between “personal” dramas with elements of the supernatural or occult (Cronos, Devil’s Backbone, Pan’s Labyrinth), and “Hollywood” action / horror films (Mimic, Blade II, Hellboy). The Ebert reviews for all of these are linked from his discussion of Pan’s Labyrinth, linked above, and he does loving justice to the both high and the low work from the list. Hellboy II reviews often end by suggesting that Hellboy II is the first film for which Hollywood trusted in the promise of profit from fully indulging del Toro’s creative eccentricities. Probably dead on, seeing as he’s been tapped for The Hobbit, but if you’re going to trust that potential why cram three hours of ideas into a two hour movie?

There was a lot of fun in Hellboy II, but it was at its worst when it was moving too quickly between boldly conceived premises that could have been enjoyably explored in much, much more detail. Don’t let that stop you. It’s a faint criticism of a thrill-ride PG-13 blockbuster, for sure, and a strong indication of how quickly we’ll go looking for any box set that includes a director’s cut.

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