Thursday, July 24, 2008

Movie: Hellboy II: The Golden Army

Movie Release Date: July 11, 2008
Genre: Action, Adventure
Running Time: 120 Minutes
Director: Guillermo del Toro
Cast: Ron Perlman, Selma Blair, Doug Jones, Jeffrey Tambor

Yuri, a friend (Jonathan), and I decided to catch the 9:45PM showing of Hellboy II: The Golden Army last night. I must state that I've never had any interest in seeing the film, and have never seen the first film, let alone even care about the comic series (I'm sure that some fanboys are ready to harpoon my heart right now). But what the hell, I figured that since my boyfriend wanted to see it and that it got decent reviews on Rotten Tomatoes, it couldn't be too bad, right?

Wrong.

Lesson 1: NEVER decide to go to the movies when you have food coma: it impairs your cinematic judgment. After stuffing our faces at Cheesecake Factory, the three of us found ourselves mighty full and thinking that it was too early to call it a night at 9:30PM. Yup, we're rebels. So Jonathan suggested that we go catch a movie, and said he wanted to watch Hellboy II. At this point, Yuri and I both rolled our eyes - Jonathan has had a history of liking really bad movies (sorry, Jon!), and it looked like Hellboy II was going to be another to add to that list of shame. I blame the food coma, but I thought "What the heck? Let's just go see it; it's gotten decent reviews on Rotten Tomatoes, and according to some online test I took a year ago, Rotten Tomato and I seem to have a pretty solid rating system for movies!" And I last time I checked, Rotten Tomatoes gave Hellboy II an 87%, and Sex and the City a 51% (which I loved).

Lesson 2: Don't have too much faith in Rotten Tomatoes. I probably passed out three times throughout the film, and each time I woke up, the movie was still going on. I can't even say I know where the halfway point of the film was. It seemed like an endless movie. Really, Rotten Tomatoes? Sex and the City was at least funny (this coming from someone who wasn't really a hardcore fan of the show and pretty much anti-girly), whereas Hellboy II attempted to be funny, but fell flat and made me cringe. And I usually heart cringe-worthy comedy (a la The Office). Definitely not worth the high 87%.

All in all, I guess if you are a fanboy and LOVE Hellboy, go see the movie. But if you're going to see it, don't drag your reluctant friends. After the credits started rolling, I noticed at least one person within the groups of people at the showing, profusively apologizing to their friends for bringing them to see such a crappy movie. 'Cause yes, your friends will be pissed. And yes, they will think less of you and you taste in films. I mean, I love Guillermo del Toro, and yes, some of the monsters definitely were Pan's Labryinth-esque, but even that didn't save the film.

Or maybe it was 'cause we saw The Dark Knight the night before .. but even so, man .. I even read the spoilers for The Dark Knight even before seeing it, and I was still amazed. Yeah, I said it. It was that good [for me].

Luckily, even Jonathan admitted the movie was horrible. And so, I'm happy to say that we're still friends.

Grade: D-

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

honestly, i can't believe that you even gave in to go see it =(

Jen Shin said...

"After stuffing our faces at Cheesecake Factory, the three of us found ourselves mighty full and thinking that it was too early to call it a night at 9:30PM."

haha, um, what does it say about me hanna and christina that we were thinking the exact opposite- we were SO ready to go home and go to bed. -__-

howardcwang said...

"Yeah, I said it. It was that good [for me]."

That's what she (the ladies) said (say)!

Anonymous said...

I downloaded hell boy 2 weeks ago.. haven't watched it yet.. maybe I shouldn't.