.: Roberts' Reviews - Movie Reviews :.

When the first Hellboy was released in 2004, it was a more of a cult hit than a blockbuster runaway. The characters were incredibly well developed and the story was a lot of fun, but it was the lucrative DVD market and the idea of a wise cracking red faced devil hero that initiated a green-lit sequel. Well, that and the fact that director Guillermo del Toro on the heels of his highly regarded Pan's Labyrinth could probably get studio backing if he wanted to do a film about gorilla feces.

This time around, Hellboy is getting the red carpet treatment. It has a summer release date which packs it in between Hancock and The Dark Knight superhero films. And its marketing budget is as large as the wardrobe budget for Sex and the City.

Does it deliver? Hell-no!

Hellboy II : The Golden Army misfires on more cylinders than my 1982 Buick Skylark. It is a mess of a film and is quite possibly the worst scripted dialogue feature that I have seen in many many years. Case in point, "You can suck my ectoplasmic schwanzstucker!". Think it's unfunny here, just imagine a German smoke-man creature voiced by Seth McFarlane.

Hellboy II brings the gang back again for the another ride. There is Liz Sherman (Selma Blair) who can torch things around her, Abe Sapien (the fish man no longer voiced by Niles Crane) and Tom Manning (Jeffrey Tambor) who still all work for a secret society that saves mankind from the creatures that go bump in the night.

The villain in this installment comes via an ancient Prince (Luke Gross) that looks to resurrect The Golden Army - a fighting force created to fight the humans long before our mothers were born - so that his people can again walk and rule the earth.

It isn't that the story is below average - it is, but try and find a good story surrounding a red horned smart talkin' devil that has guns the size of my townhome. It's that the script is so bad when characters have to communicate to each other that it lends itself more to Mystery Science Theatre 3000 than trying to rank up there with the big booming boys of summer. The chemistry between Liz and Hellboy that was so focused in the first film is as blurry as my Saturday night cab rides home. And the romance that Fish Stick and the princess try and forge is more of a freakshow rather than a compelling sub-plot.

Even the humor doesn't work. The protoplasmic mystic Johann Krauss who is the German leader of the troupe of heroes is so annoying that I wanted to smash his glass dome head with my Tardis. And his confrontation with Hellboy where Krauss ends up as mist knocking Hellboy around with locker doors looked like something that was left on the cutting room floor of the Evil Dead II - and that is not a good thing.

Not all failed. Just 90% of it. There was a good scene of Abe and Hellboy getting drunk that provided a chuckle or two and the characters as created by del Toro when they travel to an underground world of creatures and beings was as interesting in a melting pot kind of way.

But you just can't escape the dialogue in this clunker. No two lines clicked. And when you are rolling your eyes to such lines as "I'm not a baby. I'm a tumor", well you are not using those same senses to enjoy the visual style that only del Toro can bring to the screen.

I liked Hellboy. I hated Hellboy II. It's been a long time since I walked out of a theatre, but had I not wanted to waste the $70 I spent on my jumbo Coke and popcorn, I doubt I would have sat through the final 40 minutes.