How often does this happen: you go to a movie and find that the characters are uninteresting, two-dimensional puppets that you don’t remotely care about, and the only justification you can find for the seven bucks you dropped at the box office — not to mention the additional fifteen you spent on snacks — is that the film is filled with amazing visual effects and ingenious new ways to damage property. All the time, right?
So how often does the exact opposite occur? I’m talking about seeing a movie in which you really like the characters and the basic premise, but the movie itself feels disappointingly short on spectacle. That’s a much rarer animal, even a bit of a paradox, and yet, such movies do exist. Case-in-point: Hellboy, a new film based on the comic book created in 1994 by Mike Mignola.
