Hades Mission Statement #40117: (Due to this week’s FCC ban on swear words being used within the mainframe of the Internet, I am forced to refer to today’s film as HECKBOY.)
It’s like f*cking a tree knot. It’s like falling asleep during a self-induced five-finger love tug. It’s like that liquid stain I left on the coffee table upstairs: Heckboy’s annoying and you can’t scrub it free from your internal wood grain. Yet, it’s harmless and you wouldn’t even really notice it was there unless you went looking for it…
Considering the gracious community tongue bath other competitor sites have given this hulking beast, I was expecting the second coming of a cinematic Christ. Instead, I’m left with a blurred shot of celluloid that falls at stupid in its well-executed plan of dubious inertia. Yeah, Heckboy is kinda hard to watch. No, I can’t say I liked it much. And I have to wonder why. To me, it looked like a mish-mash of scenes thrown together in a wasted haste of hesitant exuberance. Stuck sitting here, thinking about it, all I can recall is one lone red streak blazing through the dark blues and browns of your typical, clichéd sci-fi multi-verse.
Is it my fault? Did I get too drunk beforehand? Or are these other reviewers to blame for falsifying their testimonies due to their alliance with director Guillermo Del Toro? He did a smart thing, making friends with every prominent “Internet Journalist” around. If you take a look at any other site, that’s all they’ve been talking about these past two months. Ah, the anticipation. It sure didn’t pay off for me. I didn’t hate it. I didn’t like it either. It was really a middle of the road kind of deal as far as I’m concerned. A non-spectacular spectacle of moving lights and images that never ceased its heeded call to be “on” twenty-four seven. I could watch it again, but certain thematic nods would still have me crumbling down the back of my seat.
For instance: Baby Ruth. They couldn’t have picked a different candy bar? When we first see Heckboy crawl out of his pit of verified doom, looking a lot like Harvey Comics' Hot Stuff, our baby demon is tempted into good guy arms by the choco-peanuty whiffs of a Baby Ruth candy bar. All I could think about was The Goonies’ Sloth crying out, “Bah-Bee Rudth!” It distracted me and put images inside my head that I didn’t necessarily want there. Maybe it’s true to the comic (don’t know, never read it). Maybe it’s really an homage. I don’t care. This is supposed to be a new film mythology. I wanted something fresh. Couldn’t he have been attracted to Abba-Zabbas or Kit-Kats? The Chunky. Now that’s a funny candy bar. Maybe not around during Nazi-walled 1941; but still funny non-the-less.
David Hyde Pierce as Abe Labia. All I could see, every time he talked, was Niles Crane. That annoyed me.
Nazis. Everyone booed the gesture when Nazis were used as the core villainous group in Bulletproof Monk, another faithless comic book adaptation. Yet, these same people, who hated the idea, are triumphing this film’s sudden use of Hitler’s whipping boys. They’ve called the move to use them ingenious. I guess it could have been. The villains don’t really do anything here except stand around and look pitiful. Heck, I can’t even remember what they were doing for a purpose or why. (Though, again, I will admit, I was eight beers into a tight buzz by the time this thing flung itself across my screen. You could very well account that into my displeased, less-than vibrant nature towards this faux-entertainemnt.)
Then, the ending. I don’t want to give anything away, but, “What the Ferpo were you thinking, Mr. Del Toro?” This “ingenious film” (as some have called it) pulls a “Men in Black” on us. It has the exact same ending, and I didn’t really care for that film either. A giant slime creature, that pretty much looks like it was ice-shaved off Will Smith’s questionable blockbuster, eats, no, swallows Heckboy. Then, our Red Hero shoots his way out, exploding it all over the place, sending chunks of goop drifting through the air. Didn’t Tommy Lee Jones do the exact same thing? I’m pretty sure he did. Yup, my Blockbuster Rental doesn’t lie.
Heckboy is dumb. I just didn’t get it. Not at all. But then again, I think I understood it better than any other reviewer I’ve yet read. Cause yeah…Heckboy is a metaphor for the mythology of the feminine G-Spot. I told my friend this directly after the film was over and he just looked at me. A loud sigh, he shoved his hands in my face and cut me off at the pass. He didn’t want to hear it.
But knowing the director’s past discretions and analyses towards his own work, this was the only conclusion I could come to. The man is obsessed with sex and the actual act of intercourse. He has made it no secret that Blade 2 represents, and is a metaphor for, the hard-core act of foreplay and “bent-over-the-pool-table” type f*cking. Each scene in that movie is set up as a means of nipple tweaking, followed by a game of rough vaginal flag feltching. Harry Knowles over at AICN wrote a whole Thesis paper about it (yet solely denied any sexual overtones in the Victor Salva directed film Jeepers Creepers; I guess sexual symbolism is only okay to discuss when it doesn’t involve children.)
Well, to tell you the truth, this whole idea of hidden sexual imagery wasn’t preset in my mind upon entering the Maitreyaplex last night. I wasn’t looking for it. It just popped out in one early, obvious scene that set, for me at least, the tone carried through the rest of the picture: We are going to see Heckboy for the first time. We enter a door that has an engraving of a woman’s body on it. A notch at the crotch area. We then entire a room with a large circle on the floor. It is a series of circles within circles. In the middle is a black dot. The Doctor makes a joke that, “Some people say it doesn’t even exist.” That’s exactly what most people say about the G-Spot. We are then taken down through a tunnel and introduced to this giant red spec that stands out like an obvious indicator of the female libido. It’s all done in simplistic, evident imagery and symbolism. And it’s funny. I’m telling you, watch the film with the notion that Heckboy is a representation of the G-Spot, or the Clitoris, and the film becomes a very humorous expose on female sexuality.
I couldn’t shake this idea from my head the entire ride. At various points, I was the only one laughing at jokes that only work when you realize what the film is trying to play on. The creatures try to tear Heckboy up only after getting past, what I like to refer to as, Abe Labia, because really, that’s what his womanly, webbed-form represents. The labia. Heckboy goes through the beginning part of the movie looking to be conquered by these slimy denizens of Hell, some of which lay eggs on him. They never get the job done, and he’s never satisfied.
Then the woman of his life starts seeing a wimp of a man. Heckboy weeps, knowing the guy will never fulfill the needs of this fire starter. His woman. He then gets in more fights with giant beasts that whip and scourge his self-being. There are a lot of scenes containing trains barrelling through tunnels as they scuffle. That’s the film in a nutshell. That’s pretty much all that happens. Then, at the end, Liz Sherman embraces this red dot, engulfing him in flames. Yes, the answer to the film’s riddle is, a woman can only satisfy herself. Not slimy demons or wimpy, sensitive men. Only she can bring the burning desire that satisfies the enigma that is the G-Spot.
I realize I’m not making a good case for this right now. I’d need to see the film again with a pen and a sheet of paper. Then I could write you a whole treatise on the subject.
Maybe I’ll do that later. I don’t have time this evening. I’ve got a 5 pm deadline that I need to keep. Do the homework yourself. Just enter the film under the astute realization that Heckboy is that mysterious pleasure zone known as the G-Spot. When watched under this influence, the work as a whole is quite brilliant. And laughable. On those terms, I’m okay with it. Still, it kind of bored me…
I now turn you to my new friend, whom I met last week while visiting the Institute for High Learning, *Super Intelligent Dog. Why don’t you tell the folks at home what you thought about this new comic book adaptation, SID…
“Well, I think they should have called it Movie. Not A Movie. Or The Movie. Just Movie. Some sh*t happened. Then some other sh*t happened. Things blew up real good. Then it was over. Movie.”
So, you didn’t like it?
“I wouldn’t say that.”
Then, you did like it?
“I wouldn’t say that either. Actually, it made me feel dead inside. Yeah, that’s what it did. There’s nothing left inside this doggy husk but asteroids and empty space. Sad. I feel kind of Sad. I want to play Scrabble. Yet, I don’t want to play Scrabble.”
Okay. Much like me, Heckboy has left you feeling indecisive and depressed.
“B-I-N-G-O.”
Any other remarks you’d like to make?
“Yes, Mr. Orange. Abe Sapien would have been funnier if he’d either simply been called Abe Lincoln, or if he wore a top hat and had one of those goofy mustache-less beards.”
You think so?
“Woof.”
Thanks, Super Intelligent Dog. If you can’t trust SID, then whom can you trust? “No one!” Would be my answer. Heckboy is quite the time killer, if that’s all you’re looking to do. IE: Kill time. Is it worth much more than that? I didn’t really think so.
Sorry, legion of waiting fans.
(*Super Intelligent Dog is a real entity. He is not a defect of my own inert brain failure. His words are his own. I didn’t make that sh*t up. If you, for some reason, have a problem with Sid, please, take it up with him. I’ve got his phone number if you need it: agentorange@movieweb.com)
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