A fabulous feast for the eyes and heart. Del Toro’s creature feature surprises at every turn. Visually it is a romp through the so many ‘what ifs’ of cultural references that the audience are dizzy with the fizzy imagination of the director of Pan’s Labyrinth.
Never will the apparently innocuous ‘tooth fairy’ remain neutral. These creatures are animated denture vultures. The early scene which is suggestive of New York’s Sotheboy’s is ‘hellish’ in the extreme and had my kids and I writhing in our seats…
The discovery of the Troll Market beneath Brooklyn Bridge is like something from Bosch and Carmina Burana!! The assembled team accompanying Hellboy on his mission to save the human world from the revenge of the elves combines an aquatic telepathic empathic guy called Abe and a Coco Chanel-look-alike pyrotechic heroine pregnant by Hellboy himself…and a robotic ‘German’ creature who has a few telekinetic surprises! Lovely moments including Abe and Hellboy’s beery singalong to Barry Manilow’s ‘can’t smile without you’ which chases away the melancholy of Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto…
The vengeful Prince and his good twin sister reminded me of Poe’s unfortunate siblings the crypt-contaminated Ushers and this I am sure was intended being representative of the range and daring of Del Toro’s imagination.
We loved it!! Now to dig out Hellboy..never seen…
