Hellboy 2: The Golden Army

I really hope Guillermo del Toro doesn't tell his children bedtime stories, because if he does those kids are going to need therapy. Between this movie and Pan's Labyrinth, it's easy to see that del Toro is a twisted puppy.

Hellboy delves into quasi-Celtic themes in the story behind this movie. He uses pinches of Celtic myth to create a beautiful but eerie world that is supposed to exist just outside of the view of ours. And while Hellboy 2 is a good enough popcorn muncher and visually gorgeous, there are a couple of big flaws.

One is his use of Celtic myth as an inspiration. If you are going to do this, get the names and archetypes right. He has Balor as the noble one-armed elf-king, and Nuada as the blood-thirsty renegade prince. Nuada is the actual one-armed king of lore, not Balor. Of course, this kind of thing is only going to be noticed by a few people, but since this is my review and it bothered me through out the film... pblllt!

The other one was that the plot was so obvious. Early in the movie I had the final conflict already scripted out in my head and I was dead on. I don't know if the Golden Army was an actual comic story, but as soon as they gave the the fore-shadowing I was thinking "that means he's going to do X", "that means Y will happen", and "this looks cool but it is pointless because of Z".

A little subtlety and fact-checking could have made this a 4.5 monkey movie. Instead, because it is still fun and visually rich, I rate it 3.5 cigar-smoking kitten-hugging flying monkeys.