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Directed by Guillermo del Toro

Written by Guillermo del Toro

and Mike Mignola

Starring Ron Perlmanand Selma Blair

Classification: 14A

As a sensational stylist for monsters and demons, an imaginative set designer and a sometimes interesting director, Guillermo del Toro always gives you something to look at in his films. Hellboy 2 features a parade of ghastly creatures, swarms of insect-like adversaries large and small, spinning martial-arts battles and an all-you-can-gape buffet of bizarre props and hideous costumes.

At his most provocative, del Toro combines childlike fantasy and adult anti-fascist allegory in such films as The Devil's Backbone and then Pan's Labyrinth, which remains his creative high point. Hellboy represents his commercial side – it's a thought-free playground for the director's biomorphic props, costumes and lurid effects.

This is the second of del Toro's films featuring the cigar-chomping, wise-cracking demon (Ron Perlman) and an array of supernatural allies and villains. The opening half-hour of Hellboy 2 is the equivalent of a fancy dress ball for monsters: There are drooping-pizza-dough faces, teeth like broken pale fences and globular eyes of creatures you associate with deep ocean vents.

Like a lot of well-staged parties, though, the affair peaks shortly after the introductions, and then devolves into intrigues, fights and mayhem.

Del Toro and his co-scripter, Mike Mignola, who created the Hellboy comics, provide enough background for the uninitiated. Hellboy, the product of a Nazi occult experiment, was raised by kindly Professor Broom (John Hurt) under the eyes of American paranormal researchers.

We meet the young demon at Christmas, 1955, when the professor tells him a creepy bedtime story. Way back in the day, all the mythological creatures (elves, goblins) used a mechanical army to wage a devastating war against humans. After the truce, the elf king put his mechanical Golden Army into storage.

Okay, so technically it's less of a bedtime story than a background exposition. Jump forward to the adult Hellboy, known as Red to his friends because of his boiled-lobster complexion, who is working as a paranormal investigator for the U.S. government. His colleagues include his girlfriend, Liz (Selma Blair), who tends to catch fire when she's angry, and the nerdy, fish-headed Abe Sapien (Doug Jones). They're all supervised by the smarmy Tom Manning (Jeffrey Tambor). The interplay between the four actors is fractious and funny, and before things start blowing up, Hellboy 2 looks like the most promising creature comedy since Monsters Inc.

The trouble begins when Hellboy and his cronies are sent to investigate an auction-house massacre. The slaughter, and the carnivorous insects that have cleaned up, are the work of Prince Nuada (Luke Goss), the heir to the elf throne. He wants to reclaim his father's crown and unleash the Golden Army to take over the world. His twin sister, Nuala (Anna Walton), sides with the humans.

With their cracked pancake makeup and blond tresses, the pair look like albino Goth rockers. And frankly, compared with the other fabulous creatures in the film – the walrus-headed gorilla, a German gas monster called Krauss, the Angel of Death with eyes on her wings – the siblings are pretty trite. You'd think the writers could come up with something more original than a resentful vampire-like prince summoning his dark forces to destroy humanity.

Hellboy 2 peaks as a domestic comedy when Hellboy and Abe struggle with their romantic woes, get drunk and sing along to Barry Manilow (is it possible to get that loaded?). Perlman gives the character the bristling swagger of a man born to wear a plastic muscle suit and stumps of horns on his balding pate.

Unfortunately, the ultimate smackdown between good and evil – in an underground bunker in Northern Ireland – is a big letdown. Without giving too much away, let's just say the Golden Army, which looks like a set of multi-tubed espresso machines, doesn't deserve its name in the title. Though Prince Nuada keeps intoning that there are “70 times 70” of them, that amounts to a paltry 4,900, more of a demonic coffee klatsch than an evil horde.

Hellboy, a sensitive devil with a tough exterior, is an inspired creation but limited as a dramatic protagonist. When you start with a demon hero, you can't settle for making his adversary a less complex demon. To create conflict, you need an opponent who is not just powerful but also imposingly self-righteous. Anyone for Hellboy vs. Oprah?