Film Review: "Hellboy" (2019)

1 1/2 out of 5

I'm not a Guillermo Del Toro fan boy because he's made some awful movies (Crimson Peak, Pacific Rim) but I do genuinely love his Hellboy films. It had never occured to me that Mike Mignola, the creator of Hellboy, did not. Apparently he wasn’t a fan.He didn't dislike them to the degree that Stephen King loathed Stanley Kubrick's version of The Shining but he did enough to declare that this is more in line with conception of Hellboy.
And oh man that's disappointing.
If you enjoyed the humor and heart of the Del Toro films then this visually cheap Nu-Metal version of Hellboy is probably not for you.
I won't rehash the plot because it's a hodge podge of barely connected and barely fleshed out gobbledygook. There's a pigman and a witch queen and giants and fairies and zombie witches and a werejaguar and even King Arthur and all of it's slopped together with the grace and precision of a drunk dog falling down a flight of stairs. I'm assuming that at some point during the production someone said "hey this is a mess", but instead of cleaning it up the creative team decided to try and cover over issues with excessive use of the word fuck and cheap gore. So if you're a twelve year boy in a very conservative house in 1998 and your favorite record is Limp Bizkit's "Significant Other" then I have then movie for you! Honestly I'm shocked they didn't put tons of boobs in this, it's the only thing missing from this Frat Boy soup to really drive home the theme of stunted male juvenalia.
I'm loathe to give this film anything but it does have a few fun gems hidden in all the flotsam. The Baba Yaga looks great and is the most interesting scene in the whole film, probably because they put an actual person in make up and not low rent CGI. The character is great looking with a twisted face and an off putting crab walk, not to mention the human child soup she tries to serve Hellboy. It's a brief excursion but one that's welcomed. I also enjoyed the huge demon monsters who roamed around London pulling people apart. It was way too short but a cool drink of water in an otherwise barren desert.
The soundtrack is a mix of bad modern rock like Muse and bad Hair Metal like Motley Crue, and almost every scene starts with some poorly inserted track. It's a fitting choice considering that this movie has the mandate to have a CD soundtrack available for purchase with a "Parental Advisory" sticker prominently placed.
Overall this movie is a solid "Uggggggggh", and with the obvious low budget and crammed script I have to wonder why this didn't go to televsion. Some of the technical and story gripes could be overlooked if I was watching this as an eight episode Netflix series. The biggest bummer here is that this all but assures we'll never get a third Del Toro film in this series and it feels like such a waste.
But this is what Mike Mignola wanted, and apparently Mike Mignola is a stunted man-child who stopped maturing in early pubescence and feels that the height of culture is bad action and the word fuck all set to butt rock.
And if that sound like it's gonna piss off your parents then have I got the movie for you, dingus.