Hellboy II: The Golden Army would seem to boast the same director & writer as Hellboy, the 2004 adaptation of Mike Mignola’s graphic novels. Yet Guillermo del Toro has since undergone a metamorphosis from respected but relatively unknown genre geek (working on Mimic and Blade II) to widely acclaimed art house auteur on the strength of 2006’s Pan’s Labyrinth. This fractured Spanish-language fairy tale was a natural progression from Del Toro’s sophisticated 2001 ghost story The Devil’s Backbone.

Expectations run high, then, for Hellboy II, given the astounding praise Pan’s Labyrinth garnered. Does Del Toro satisfy the comic-hoarding fan boy as much as the seasoned film critic? Early evidence would point to “yes”. But Hellboy is not in fact a comic book premise elevated to art - it’s simply passable entertainment.

The characters revel in the film’s easy-going tone. Ron Pearlman provides an anchor as Hellboy, affectionately known as Big Red. Liz Sherman (Selma Blair) has mastered her fire powers, but cohabitating with Red provides a new challenge. Fish dude Abe Sapien (Doug Jones) finds stirs of romantic feeling confounding his intellect. These folks are kept under the thumb of the US government, working for the Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defense.

Flustered BPRD director Tom Manning (Jeffrey Tambor) brings in by-the-book bureaucrat Johann Kraus (voiced by Seth MacFarlane with an outrageous German accent) to keep Hellboy in line. Kraus, actually a cloud of “ectoplasmic” smoke contained in a diver’s suit, inevitably turns out to be more adventurer than paper-pusher.

What sort of paranormal are these guys researching and defending against? Having polished off sorcerer Rasputin in the first feature, the team turns its attention to the fairy realm. This realm stands in opposition to the modern world and its scientific principles, and encompasses steam machinery, magic talismans, and mythological creatures. (It’s odd that apart from fancy guns, BPRD does not seem willing to employ contemporary technology to combat the esoteric.)

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Starring: Ron Pearlman, Doug Jones, Selma Blair, Luke Goss, Anna Walton

Directed by: Guillermo del Toro

Written by: Guillermo del Toro

Creatures are, of course, Del Toro’s primary strength. Great care is taken in distinguishing every minor character through a distinct concept and laborious make-up art, and each inhabits an equally rococo locale. The Troll Market - Hellboy’s answer to the Star Wars cantina and Harry Potter’s Diagon Alley - is clearly designed to show off as many creations as possible.

The most prominent new faces are Nuada (Luke Goss), Elven Prince of the Underworld, and his sister, Princess Nuala (Anna Walton). The Prince is the villain of the piece, a martial-arts dynamo who wishes to unleash the Golden Army on humanity. Through the aid of these 4900 indestructible mechanical warriors, outcast paranormal beings would reclaim their dominant place in the world.

Nuada provides a thought for Red to chew on: should he be killing rare creatures, the like of which the world will never see again? Since many are harmful rather than benevolent, Hellboy spends little time deliberating, and a theme that should be poignant and central to the story is instead fleeting.

Princess Nuala sides with the BPRD and charms Abe by reading Tennyson. Alas, her presence is more a vulnerability than asset, inadvertently leading Nuada closer to his goals.

While the twins have pleasant on screen presences, Nuada is an underwhelming foe for Hellboy & Co. The means by which he is finally dispatched could have been deployed much earlier and more effectively; likewise, the source of his power could have been melted before the climax. These logical inconsistencies undermine an otherwise tight script, and and our heroes are left without a sufficiently dire threat.

Nonetheless, each team member has a chance to show off their fighting chops, and the action sequences are consistently more spritely than the sometimes-lumbering CGI smack-downs of the first Hellboy. Be it tooth fairies, trolls, tree monsters, the Golden Army, or Nuada with his extensible blade, there’s always something in need of pummeling.

R&R time between battles extends to beer, sing-a-longs, and domestic melodrama. The humour and familiar relationship hurdles broaden the film’s appeal considerably, but also reduce the strangeness and sense of wonder with which red, blue, and flaming folks should be regarded.

In an early scene, Manning laments Hellboy’s burgeoning celebrity to Abe Sapien while various human BPRD agents wrestle with enormous, ill-tempted monsters. Abe casually dismisses this hullabaloo, saying, ” It’s Friday.” Indeed, in Hellboy II, Del Toro delivers exactly the sort of fantasy adventure we’ve come to expect on a summer weekend, for which he will receive acclaim.