At least the skittles were good.
My brother and I decided after a long week at work we wanted to go blow off some steam tonight -- you know, do something fun and mindless that would be relaxing and enjoyable. So after a quick stop at the mall, we decided to check out Hellboy II. We enjoyed the first one, the previews looked good, and Pan's Labyrinth was pretty awesome so really, how bad could it be?
Let me put it this way: as we were leaving the movie, my brother said, "I try not to throw this phrase around unless I really mean it, but I think that might actually be the worst movie I've ever seen. In my entire life." I thought it was perhaps only the second worst movie I'd ever seen in my life, but only because I forced myself to watch like 20 minutes of the Lindsay Lohan pile of steaming, soul-sucking crap known as I Know Who Killed Me a few weeks ago at 3am when I was suffering from a terrible bout of insomnia.
Again, let me reiterate: I like Guillermo del Toro. I think he's kind of genius. And I really, thoroughly enjoyed the first film. It was funny, very cheeky and recognized that there was a certain level of camp at work in the movie -- and that worked well. Ron Perlman was pretty damn hilarious, the action was good, and it just looked amazing. And Pan's Labyriinth (which, BTW, should also probably have been on that EW 100 movies list)n was amazing and disturbing and pretty brilliant. If only somehow he could have managed something approximating those films....
The editing was so bad that the plot moved in more of a chutes and ladders kind of direction rather than some kind of linear path. Things happen in strange ways that make no sense whatsoever, and often for no discernible reason. Yes, many of the creatures/sets/effects look amazing, they don't seem to serve any great purpose other than to be "different" or "weird" or "wildly unique". Or something like that. Imagine if you can that del Toro took every half baked, partially conceived or previously scrapped idea for a character from both Hellboy and Pan's and then threw them all together in no particular pattern. Just, you know, 'cause he could. While Perlman was still pretty good, Selma Blair (who I generally find to be a decent actress) was clearly so unhappy to be there she phoned her performance in from an old rotary handset in Outer Mongolia plugged into the phone system using a rusty piece of chicken wire. The opening scene that tells the fairy tale that sets the premise for the film is so horrendous, I almost couldn't watch it -- in it, Hellboy is a buck toothed kid who thinks Howdy Doody is a real person (which I have no problem with) but the kid cast in the role so utterly terrible, they DUBBED HIS VOICE (badly). Sadly, they could not dub the physical piece of his performance which was equally terrible.
Some of the lines are so lame, you almost can't compute them. For instance: Hellboy refers to one character, who sports a glass helmet, as a "glasshole" -- a joke so terrible my local rimshot went on strike in protest. The music by the normally brilliant (or at least interesting) Danny Elfman was cheesy and cartoony at best -- and NOT in a good way. The sole musical highlight is a drunken duet between Abe and Red to "Can't Smile Without You" by Barry Manilow. And even that gag went on for so long you began to wonder if you were actually going to have to watch them sing the ENTIRE song.
I could go on and on, but I just thinking about it this hard is making my head hurt. I think Ian (my bro) really summed it up best when he said: "I could put a turd in a ziploc bag and it still would have made for a better script than that piece of crap."
Some of the fight scenes were cool and interesting and there were one or two genuinely funny moments, but on the whole, the movie just didn't have any soul. It felt tired and incoherent and cheesy and the only enjoyment I really got out of it was laughing at how unintentionally absurd and funny some of it was, which just makes it SAD. And BAD. And makes me kind of MAD (for spending 10 bucks and two hours I'll never get back on it).
The worst part of all of this is that we were so convinced it was getting panned by critics, we couldn't wait to get home and look at RottenTomatoes.com and stuff and be validated by the abysmal scores. Except the overall rating there is like an 87%. So we checked metacritic.com -- 78. We started reading some of the reviews (there were actually several perfect scores to be found on metacritic) and were just slack-jawed by the praise we read! It seems so contradictory to our experience that we are beginning to wonder about our sanity. It's almost as if the critics en masse said "It seemed strange and weird and I didn't really understand it -- but it's by del Toro so that must mean it's brilliant!"
So tell me friends -- has anyone seen it? Heard about it from a friend? PLEASE tell me we aren't alone in thinking that this really is one craptastic film.
Let me put it this way: as we were leaving the movie, my brother said, "I try not to throw this phrase around unless I really mean it, but I think that might actually be the worst movie I've ever seen. In my entire life." I thought it was perhaps only the second worst movie I'd ever seen in my life, but only because I forced myself to watch like 20 minutes of the Lindsay Lohan pile of steaming, soul-sucking crap known as I Know Who Killed Me a few weeks ago at 3am when I was suffering from a terrible bout of insomnia.
Again, let me reiterate: I like Guillermo del Toro. I think he's kind of genius. And I really, thoroughly enjoyed the first film. It was funny, very cheeky and recognized that there was a certain level of camp at work in the movie -- and that worked well. Ron Perlman was pretty damn hilarious, the action was good, and it just looked amazing. And Pan's Labyriinth (which, BTW, should also probably have been on that EW 100 movies list)n was amazing and disturbing and pretty brilliant. If only somehow he could have managed something approximating those films....
The editing was so bad that the plot moved in more of a chutes and ladders kind of direction rather than some kind of linear path. Things happen in strange ways that make no sense whatsoever, and often for no discernible reason. Yes, many of the creatures/sets/effects look amazing, they don't seem to serve any great purpose other than to be "different" or "weird" or "wildly unique". Or something like that. Imagine if you can that del Toro took every half baked, partially conceived or previously scrapped idea for a character from both Hellboy and Pan's and then threw them all together in no particular pattern. Just, you know, 'cause he could. While Perlman was still pretty good, Selma Blair (who I generally find to be a decent actress) was clearly so unhappy to be there she phoned her performance in from an old rotary handset in Outer Mongolia plugged into the phone system using a rusty piece of chicken wire. The opening scene that tells the fairy tale that sets the premise for the film is so horrendous, I almost couldn't watch it -- in it, Hellboy is a buck toothed kid who thinks Howdy Doody is a real person (which I have no problem with) but the kid cast in the role so utterly terrible, they DUBBED HIS VOICE (badly). Sadly, they could not dub the physical piece of his performance which was equally terrible.
Some of the lines are so lame, you almost can't compute them. For instance: Hellboy refers to one character, who sports a glass helmet, as a "glasshole" -- a joke so terrible my local rimshot went on strike in protest. The music by the normally brilliant (or at least interesting) Danny Elfman was cheesy and cartoony at best -- and NOT in a good way. The sole musical highlight is a drunken duet between Abe and Red to "Can't Smile Without You" by Barry Manilow. And even that gag went on for so long you began to wonder if you were actually going to have to watch them sing the ENTIRE song.
I could go on and on, but I just thinking about it this hard is making my head hurt. I think Ian (my bro) really summed it up best when he said: "I could put a turd in a ziploc bag and it still would have made for a better script than that piece of crap."
Some of the fight scenes were cool and interesting and there were one or two genuinely funny moments, but on the whole, the movie just didn't have any soul. It felt tired and incoherent and cheesy and the only enjoyment I really got out of it was laughing at how unintentionally absurd and funny some of it was, which just makes it SAD. And BAD. And makes me kind of MAD (for spending 10 bucks and two hours I'll never get back on it).
The worst part of all of this is that we were so convinced it was getting panned by critics, we couldn't wait to get home and look at RottenTomatoes.com and stuff and be validated by the abysmal scores. Except the overall rating there is like an 87%. So we checked metacritic.com -- 78. We started reading some of the reviews (there were actually several perfect scores to be found on metacritic) and were just slack-jawed by the praise we read! It seems so contradictory to our experience that we are beginning to wonder about our sanity. It's almost as if the critics en masse said "It seemed strange and weird and I didn't really understand it -- but it's by del Toro so that must mean it's brilliant!"
So tell me friends -- has anyone seen it? Heard about it from a friend? PLEASE tell me we aren't alone in thinking that this really is one craptastic film.