Michelle was all excited about the new one, based on its trailer (I've always been put off by the ridiculous-seemingness of Hellboy himself, but was persuadable given del Toro's and Ron Perlman's involvement), so we watched the first film on dvd and then, the following Friday night (and with Jarrod in tow), saw the sequel on the big screen.
The first one is really only okay - it has some great images and a sly sense of humour (and Jeffrey Tambor up its sleeve), but it's too uneven and has too many dull patches to succeed on any terms, even as a comic book adaptation (not that the bar is lower for such, but rather that the parameters for success are different). The sequel, while in a similar vein as the original, has a much more rapid-fire pace, both in terms of action sequences and jokes (it's laugh out loud hilarious at points), and is truly spectacular (it's hard to imagine del Toro's Hobbit as anything short of a resounding success) - it's rare to see such vividly imagined and rendered imagery deployed almost purely for the sake of entertainment in the service of an unashamed genre piece such as this, though I still find the basic lack of gravitas of Hellboy himself, as likeable and well realised a figure as he is, distracting, particularly when pitted against the epic scope of the film.
