Ron Perlman is great again as the tough yet lovable hero.

Selma Blair, looking like a beleaguered Linda Fiorentino, fares less well as his love interest and fellow demon fighter.

The main bad guy, strikingly played by Luke Goss, provides plenty of demonic energy and interest.

Del Toro wrote the story and screenplay, as well as directed. So though based on the Hellboy comik book, this is largely GDT’s show. And what a show it is. Even more than most comik movies, the movie presents not just an alternate universe, but alternate mythologies to populate them, an achievement that begins to rival what Tolkien did in Lord of the Rings. (Thus it is only fitting that GDT is now making not just one, but two movies of The Hobbit.)

PG-13 indeed. Kids prone to nightmares (as I was) need to stay away from this movie, since it is a parade of the most lifelike bogymen you can possibly imagine.

That said, the violence is denatured: i.e., gut wrenching fights and battles with only minimal blood shed, kind of like in Lord of the Rings.

I was troubled by several goofy contrivances within the movie’s fantasy world. For instance, when our heroes get attacked by a swarm of small but vicious “Tooth Fairies,” they shoot them one-by-one, which is somewhat akin to fending off a swarm of bees with a 357 Magnum. You’d be covered with dozens by the time you blast one. Further, the Tooth Fairies clearly have the ability to swarm everyone and everything, yet leave our heroes alone for extended periods of the battle. In short, I found myself unwilling to suspend disbelief at key junctures.