"Komic Book" Movie with a capital 'K'.

i.e. the goofy, "cute" music cues and song choices! (the ultra-light and airy - read: ironic - "All I Want to Do Is Rock" by Travis - as Hellboy grins up towards the camera - whilst actually falling many, UNTOLD dozens of feet to the earth... after a particularly violent explosion)

one of those little 'Tooth Fairies', upon being struck by... well, ONE of our heroes, flies right at camera, and actually STRIKES the lens/fourth wall and slides down and off it - replete, of course, with a "windshield wipe" sound effect. (that's a bit much, don't you think? even for an action / COMEDY?)

that German gas-cloud beating Hellboy with the locker doors and striking Hellboy's mug... with the resulting indentation on the door being a perfect re-creation of Hellboy's face... and on and ON AND ON. there's countless bits of zaniness well on display here...

AND i'm not NECESSARILY complaining - after all, here in North America, it was released (rather unluckily, as it turned out) just one week shy of the incendiary, historic first weekend "The Dark Knight" was opened - either the weekend before the record-breaking Joker pic's or after... and so this flick's playful, winking comedy wackiness that's straight out of a cartoon is certainly refreshingly FUN, when compared with the ("Why so...?") SERIOUS timbre of said bat-sequel.

after all, did not Sir William Cowper famously opine that it is "Variety" which is "The spice of life"?

(at least I THINK it was Will Cowper who done coined the famous proverb /slash/ cliché, but i could easily be wrong; Cowper's was simply the first name attained from the briefest of Google Goggles.)

and hey, who GIVES a (bleep), anyway, man??