This is true. I said/did some dumb, horrid things as a teenager, and some awesome things, just because I *needed* to. My body felt compelled to.

And, even weirder, Addams Family Values is even better. It's becoming a weird Thanksgiving Day tradition for my family these past couple of years now that we've singled it out (as well, most of its dirtiest, most subversive stuff flies over the little kids' heads).

They're hostile to him because they blame him for bringing this epic battle out of the shadows, and thus threatening their lives. Also, xenophobic fear of the "magical other" so the movie gets some race stuff in there. As soon as the "Big Red Ape" (King Kong esque stuff, too) was no longer a fun, harmless weirdo, and…

The two most disappointing ones for me are Martin & Orloff (UCB) and Run Ronnie Run! (Mr. Show)

I dug the movie, though it did seem to retread the same ground as the show. Better than it being bad, but just not essential or anything.

What is he supposed to do, go back to that two-bit rodeo of being a doctor?

I watched it recently, and found it more subversive than expected, but not as much as the Addams Family movies.

For a handful of years, I used to watch the show on a recommendation-only basis, as I had friends who watched every single goddamn episode and would tell me which ones were really good. Then, even they gave up.

I disagree that it mishandles the "humans suck" thing at the end. The beginning of the film is Hellboy and co coming out of the closet, and only Hellboy seems to be enjoying that fame. Immediately after saving a baby and performing an act of destruction against a wild, unruly creature (because he was left with no…

I mean, I love the original one too, but you said 2 was terrible - I had to give it my best defense.

That's a terrific reading on it. I've seen the movie maybe a dozen times, and everytime I just kind of slink into it like a warm blanket. Del Toro's movies tend to work really well on a literal level, so it's easy to pass up subtext that's right in front of your damn face the whole time.

I never thought of the faeries as a Native American metaphor, but I like that. I always took it as a kind of metaphor about man's insatiable hunger against nature. I always saw it as an eco-action movie, but not with its head up its own ass like Avatar.

Can't we have both? I like both.

Like I said, he's a commander, but the movie uses the fact that he isn't cold and callous to align some of our sympathies with him. He isn't just sending out men to die willy-nilly. The dying of the magical world here is also very, very important, because he knows if he doesn't use everything he has, then these…

The story was very straight-forward. Good guys want to stop bad guys from raising an apocalyptically strong army (which, as the final act, demonstrates just how strong that army would be set loose on the world). Bad guy wants to raise and command that army. Good guys need to stop him before he does.

The movie moved like lightning for me, from diverse setpiece to diverse setpiece. I barely noticed the 2 hour runtime, and when it was over, I wanted to watch the non-existent Hellboy 3 immediately.

Sure, a Merry-Go-Round with a beautiful woman sounds nice, but what I'd really like to do is have sex with her.

They don't have to even hit anything. They can just be on a fishing boat, shooting the shit about Frank Sinatra and candy bars for 2 hours.

He's Ron Perlman, so him being off-message and goofy is kind of "on-message" in a way.

Terrible… how?