There are moments in “Hellboy 2: The Golden Army,” Guillermo del Toro’s profligate sequel to “Hellboy,” capable of delighting even the most jaded, comic-book-weary summer-blockbuster conscript. (That would be me.) Lately we have seen plenty of big, asphalt-smashing street battles between hero and nemesis — Tim Roth and Edward Norton, hopped up on military growth hormones, hurling cars across Harlem in “The Incredible Hulk”; Charlize Theron and Will Smith enacting some kind of meteorological superhero S & M in “Hancock” — but nothing quite like the scene in which Ron Perlman’s Hellboy, a baby in one hand and an oversize gun in the other, mixes it up with a giant, angry plant.
What makes that sequence memorable is not just the visual audacity of the stunts and effects, but also the weird animist vibe that the photosynthesizing fiend gives off. He might have sprung from the pastoral imagination of the Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki, if Mr. Miyazaki’s environmentalism inclined him toward anger rather than sorrow. And even after Hellboy carries out a necessary and brutal pruning, a moment of mourning is permitted. That raging vine, after all, was the last of an endangered species.
Which is not to say that “Hellboy 2” is exactly, or primarily, an ecological allegory, though it does have some twinklings of green consciousness amid all the red- and gold-hued mayhem. There is just too much else going on to single out any particular theme or mood, which is part of the movie’s charm and also, sometimes, a source of exasperation.
Mr. Perlman, painted bright red and outfitted with sawed-off horns and an extra-large fist, is happy to ignore the trappings of digital-era cinematic splendor and act like the cigar-chomping hero of an old black-and-white B picture. The script (and the comics by Mike Mignola that are the movies’ source) may identify the character as a demon exiled from the underworld, but as a movie archetype Hellboy is more like the gruff sergeant or the cynical gumshoe, with a soft heart, naturally, beating under the hard shell. In Mr. Perlman’s performance you catch glimpses of Bogey and Lee Marvin and hints of Robert Mitchum and George Kennedy, all blended with devilish glee and disarmingly sexy sincerity.
And the movie itself is similarly easygoing in its eclecticism. The story is a happy hodgepodge of bantering humor and portentous metaphysics, packing a remarkable range of moods and genre elements into a fairly compact 110 minutes. The love between Hellboy and the downcast, combustible Liz Sherman (Selma Blair) gives this film, like its precursor, an undercurrent of hard-boiled, noirish romanticism. There are also Tolkienish elves (as Mr. del Toro limbers up for “The Hobbit”), officious bureaucrats and a showstopping Barry Manilow song washed down with many cans of Tecate beer. The whole affair is pulpy, jokey, sometimes touching and frequently nonsensical: a big mess and, mostly, a lot of fun.
An ancient truce between the elves and the humans has been broken by an angry blond elf-prince (Luke Goss), who robs an auction house and whose twin sister (Anna Walton) bleeds maple syrup whenever he is injured. Back at the top-secret paranormal government lab where Hellboy grouchily works, his put-upon boss (the indispensable Jeffrey Tambor) welcomes a new authority figure, the punctilious Dr. Johann Kraus, a puff of gas with a creaky diving suit and a Prussian accent (voiced by Seth MacFarlane). Abe Sapien (Doug Jones), Hellboy’s begilled foil and sidekick, returns and this time finds some romance of his own.
But enough summarizing. Mr. del Toro has made delicate, finely modulated films in the past (“The Devil’s Backbone” and “Pan’s Labyrinth,” most notably). Here, though, with a big budget to play with and a pop-culture franchise to tend, he lets abundance trump coherence.
Like the ancient king who builds an army of nearly 5,000 enchanted mechanical warriors (the Golden Army of the film’s title), this director is a compulsive and prodigious maker of creatures, and for this movie he seems to have opened up his notebooks and let his imagination run free. Around every corner is a strange new beast or gizmo, from the tiny, swarming “tooth fairies” who devour a room full of art collectors to the slimy denizens of the troll market, one of whom has what looks like an infant attached to its chest. “I’m not a baby, I’m a tumor,” the appendage explains.
“Hellboy 2” is not a great movie — its narrative is at once too busy and too perfunctory — but like that sassy little tumor, it is lovable in its prodigious grotesquery. It was made with the kind of heedless, geeky enthusiasm that has been drained out of the standard, somber superhero melodramas that crowd the multiplexes these days. It’s an artful, clever throwaway that may, over time, turn into a valuable collectible.
“Hellboy 2” is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). It has some scary monsters, grown-up problems and salty lingo.
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