OxfordPress.com

Grade: 3 stars out of 5

Verdict: Forget about the plot - just enjoy this comic-book ride.

When will superheroes finally get cool, colorful names -- rockin' handles like Smashing Death, Cosmic Defender of Do-gooding, or Mike? We keep sticking them with the first dull description that pops to mind: Superman, Wonder Woman. The canon of prosaic superhero names makes an anomaly like Hulk sound madly exotic.

Now moviegoers can contend with Hellboy -- yeah, a boy from hell. But let it roll around your head for a bit, and its tongue-in-cheek ring will slowly become audible. Hellboy. It's so dorky, it's funny.

Readers of Mike Mignola's decade-old Dark Horse comic of the same name already know this. The concept is to take a familiar monster figure -- in this case a spawn of Satan, with iconic horns, tail and all -- and make him an agent of good, combating fellow hideous monsters for the preservation of humankind.

Guillermo del Toro's above-average if not-quite-spectacular adaptation of "Hellboy" sticks to this expectation-flipping recipe and retains the comic's cheeky, po-mo spirit. Even the monster's bookish mentor Trevor Bruttenholm (the fabulous John Hurt, looking like a German composer, or a fusty Dickens codger) admits that Hellboy is "perhaps not the most fortunate name." His friends call him Red.

And red he is. Played by Ron Perlman, a fine character actor with the build of a cinder block, Hellboy bears the subtle flesh tones of a fire engine. His Mount Rushmore jaw enters rooms before he does. His devilish tail curls, but he has carefully sanded off his horns in a vain attempt to fit in with the human world. His right hand is an outsize chunk of stone that doubles frequently as a sledgehammer. His furry muttonchops connect to a snug samurai ponytail. And, along with some fancy sci-fi weaponry, he carries Catholic rosary beads, presumably to fend off bad folks from his brimstone hometown.

That's a confusing collage of mythic elements, a nerdy heap of hodge-podge the movie can't satisfactorily explain or do anything with. As the film's pummeling action crashes along, del Toro only throws in more quasi-religious, supernatural, historical, mystic, warrior, horror and sci-fi gunk, clogging up what should be a whip-fast joy ride of humor and hellaciousness.

I won't even begin to detail the plot; who needs the headache? But essentially you have Nazis and monsters (boo), an amphibious man (yay), apocalyptic mutterings, satanic ceremonies and the mystic paranoia of that old Russian cutup Rasputin (huh?). During one of several incomprehensible rituals to open the gates of Darkness, a baby Hellboy pops out, cute, red and simian, and immediately cottons to the nutty yums of Baby Ruth bars.

It's weird and funny, and del Toro and Perlman sustain this swirling tone of dislocation throughout the picture, which could profit from a good 20-minute trim. Their playful levity almost absorbs the dreary mechanics of this sort of promiscuous genre pastiche, but the movie never finds its tonal footing, slipping and sliding on too much stuff, from martial-arts ballets and subway chases, to raging demons and boogery pools of ectoplasm.

Perlman plays the grown-up Hellboy as a cigar-chomping blend of Tom Waits and a Bronx cop who prefers "the whole lonely hero thing." His sangfroid in the face of danger becomes its own gag, especially since Hellboy is exceptionally accident-prone and repeatedly battered in snaps of Murphy's Law slapstick. His response is generally a resigned roll of the eyes. (Best line after he dispatches a beast: "I just fried Stinky.")

Predominantly a maker of art horror movies, del Toro has a well-rounded sense of story. In all his films, particularly his personal works "Cronos" and "The Devil's Backbone," he develops an emotional strain that ties the characters and their pasts together with meaning. (He also loves windup Victorian-age gadgetry, scholarly mysteries of the occult and deadly, slurpy creatures.) "Hellboy" flirts with emotional elements (even romance) that never fully connect because del Toro hasn't slowed down enough to develop a cohesive humanism.

In its place, he plunges into the murky cosmologies of the paranormal for a climax that keeps any trace of sense or logic to itself. It appears that Rasputin wants to open the portal to hell and ruin everyone's day, but I could be horribly wrong.

Afterward, a friend said, "OK, what just happened?"

Have no idea. But it's kind of fun.