PHILM: HELLBOY -- Hell yeah.
Folks playing on H.P. Lovecraft's themes of old gods that are all tentacles, cold hunger, black bile and hate often take themselves way too seriously. Hellboy puts the right cartoonish varnish on that old routine, in part by casting David Hyde Pierce as an icthyoid named Abe Sapien. (While on the topic, here's another nice exception, a funny short story by Neil Gaimon.) Accordingly, this movie is my nominee for Best Use Of Lovecraft in a Major Motion Picture, since the villains in Hellboy are all about being eaten first. Other heavy themes -- love, madness, salvation and the destruction of Earth -- are given similar light treatment to similarly good effect.
Otherwise, Hellboy is exactly what you think it's going to be and most of what you're likely hoping for as well. In fact, it's almost good enough to redeem the mostly-red superhero genre from the soiling that Daredevil gave it last year. It's not everything that Daredevil wasn't -- because, you know, where would you start? -- but it does have the key pieces that have been missing from other recent comic book adaptations.
Like fun, for example. Hellboy is fun.
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