To be honest after seeing Hellboy I wasn’t so sure about seeing number 2 and it seemed my fears were well founded in the first five minutes when the background story is given in a shadow puppet style. However after the titles I was soon corrected, with a great piece of timing comedy that you will not see coming.

After that the story boils down to three different story lines - bad person wants power and needs completed artefact (and tries to complete it while good guys try to stop him), love-story lines, and a “dealing with the brand new boss” story line.

The main idea of good vs bad is very thin with very little depth just a whole lot of jumping around, punching things and witty one liners.

The love story lines however are a lot more interesting with some pretty good comedy and moments that you can just cringe at.

However by far the most comedic story line is the breaking in of the new German boss which will have you sniggering for a good part of the film, containing by far the most funny and original bits.

The characters are a mixed bag, Hellboy; the hero is by far the stand out with great and unpredictable one liners - he’s pure original. Abraham, Hellboy’s best friend and book smart amphibian, is struck with his first crush and gets his first hangover when Hellboy gets involved.

Princess Nuada is your stereotypical relative of the psycho bad guy, who doesn’t know whether to stop, help or leave alone. However with a quite original piece of writing it turns out that they are linked and that they take the same damage as each other and know exactly the same things as each other.

Prince Nuala is your psycho ninja, martial arts, sword-toting ass kicking angry man. With very little surprises coming from just a whole lots of slicing, dicing, stabbing and jumping his character is paper thin, but he’s sure easy to hate and fear.

Liz Sherman is basically like the human torches only she can’t fly around but can shoot loads of fire balls, plus she’s pretty cute, however she is Hellboy’s girlfriend and does a moderate performance although she doesn’t really stand out for me.

Johann Krauss, what can I say? He is without a doubt fantastic, with only Hellboy managing to equal him in a love hate relationship. He is the new boss with strictness for the rules and he just has a great German accent and the fact the he is a psychic being in a suit full of gas that can control other things, he provides an awful lot of comedy and manages to do all sorts of wonderful things - the Swiss army knife of paranormal freaks!

On the whole it’s a fairly enjoyable film, a definite rent and possible own.  I would give it a 7 since it’s good but not as astounding as other films out.

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Full cast list for Hellboy II: Aidan Cook, Alex McSweeney, Andrew Hefler, Anna Walton, Beatrice Zentai, Belinda Henley, Blake Perlman, Brian Herring, Brian Steele, Clive Llewellyn, Colin Ford, Doug Jones, Ferenc Elek, Gavin McKenzie, Ivan Kamaras, James Dodd, Jamie Wilson, Jeanne Mockford, Jeffrey Tambor, Jeremy Zimmerman, Jimmy Kimmel, John Alexander, John Hurt, Judit Viktor, Justin Pierre, Kevin Hudson, Luke Goss, Matt Rippy, Matthew O’Toole, Michael Mehlmann, Mike Kelly, Montse Ribe, Palma Pasztor, Péter Horkay, Richard Rifkin, Ron Perlman, Roy Dotrice, Sandor Svigelj, Santiago Segura, Selma Blair, Seth MacFarlane, Szonja Oroszlan, Tim Flavin, Tim Larsen, Todd Williams.