An entirely subjective review. Minor spoilers.

Most movies aren’t made for me. I accept that. I’m a 35 - no, bugger, 36 - year old woman with a childlike taste for fantasy coupled with an adult taste for psychological complexity - real complexity, not what passes for it in Hollywood. The last movie I saw that satisfied both was Pan’s Labyrinth. I didn’t know when I saw it that its director, Guillermo del Toro, was also the director of Hellboy. I found Hellboy enjoyable but forgettable, although Ron Perlman was great as always in the title role as the red son of Satan with a dark destiny and a flippant attitude.

With del Toro in the director’s chair again for Hellboy II, I went along expecting to at least enjoy the film, and I did. Points for hotness to Prince Nuada (Luke Goss), the would-be Che Guevara of the elves, who looks like Elric of Melnibone and fights like Jet Li. But the real stars were the creatures — the goblins, trolls and what have you. The designs were terrifically inventive and the troll market scene offered a look-see into a detailed fantasy world like that of The Neverending Story or Labyrinth. My imagination was turned on.

And then — well, there was a whole lot of fighting. There was a nod in the direction of moral shades of grey, with Nuada’s grievance against humans being portrayed as a legitimate one. There was a sad scene where a nature elemental, a unique creature, was called up by Nuada to fight — and killed (but if he cared so much, why did he use it in that way at all?), and a dark scene where a terrifically odd-looking angel of death saves Hellboy’s life with the reminder that he is destined to bring ruin to the world. But things didn’t get much deeper than that. The two romances, between Hellboy and Liz and Abraham Sapien and Nuada’s sister Nuala, were cardboard. As a reviewer pointed out, the film implies that Hellboy and Liz’s ongoing day to day difficulties were magically solved by a crisis situation where he was injured and she was afraid to lose him — and then really solved by her getting pregnant. Right. I am really sick of films telling whopping lies about the mechanics of relationships. If there isn’t room in the script to deal with the human issues properly, then think up some human issues to fit the script. Why does a female character’s major conflict always have to be a romantic one? Maybe Liz could have had a different kind of problem. Perhaps she could have sympathised with Nuada’s cause. Or something.

Then there was the fighting. I know that’s a large part of what Hellboy is about. You gots to have slugging matches. But I was disappointed that the intricate troll market served chiefly as a backdrop to violent mayhem, including one particularly nasty death that probably would have earned the film a stricter rating if the character had been human. I found myself wishing that the fairy world of Hellboy II had been saved for another movie.

As I said, despite my gripes, I did enjoy it. There was enough in it for me, and it wasn’t as if I went in expecting another Pan’s Labyrinth. Still, I hope Guillermo del Toro will find more complex and more grownup vehicles — or heck, even more childlike ones — for his imagination.  I don’t know whether it’s age or just surfeit, but violence doesn’t entertain me much anymore. I tend to find it either boring or distressing. Or perhaps it’s the way Hollywood does its violence nowadays.  There used to be a sense of pacing and buildup (didn’t there? Am I imagining things?) to catharsis. Now there seems a tendency to keep the level of violence high all the way through and make the final “cathartic” scene so long that one’s eyes glaze over and there is not a sense of tension being released so much as a towel being wrung out.

Most Hollywood films I don’t enjoy enough to bother reviewing. They don’t engage my imagination at all. They fill in time. I enjoyed Hellboy II enough that I would watch it again; I think I’m just kvetching so much because I know the standard del Toro is capable of and I want him to make more films of that quality. And I really do worry about the overload of violence on the big screen. It’s crass, and the time spent on it means that more interesting matters are given short shrift.