Oh my god, this was bad. I saw the trailers, and some of the taglines and repartee looked pretty good...but no. As often happens, they took all the good parts of the movie and made a two minute trailer out of them, luring moviegoers to suffer through the other two hours of crap with no recourse.

This is awful and derivative, but not in a big bold way that leads to screamingly funny and trenchant reviews (like Star Wars: Attack of the Clones or League of Extraordinary Gentlemen). No, this is awful and derivative in a quietly annoying way that had me and Mr. Otter looking at the timer on the dvd player quite often, and finally sent him to sleep with our cat Bob on his lap. At least Bob was happy...

The thing was, firstly, I kept expecting something better...several people (who shall be thankful to remain nameless in this interview, but you know who you are and there is a special seat in Hell's Movie Theatre reserved for you...and you WILL NOT be happy with what you have to watch) told me it was amusing and worth seeing.

But all the way through, I kept thinking that the characters looked familiar...and I finally realized why: All the characters in the movie reminded me of someone else:

• Liz Sherman's character was actually supposed to be Liv Tyler, aka Arwen from Lord of the Rings

• Abe Sapien (don't ask), the aquatic guy, was just like C3PO from Star Wars

• FBI guy was a John Cusack character without the talent, the 'baby faced guy with a heart who's really got it together'

• Hellboy was way too much like the Hulk, only red instead of green, and without a secret identity (oh, he cut his horns off so he wouldn't stand out in a crowd, right...)

• And of course the slightly dotty professor with the English accent who did occult research? Indiana Jones' father, of course, although he was no Sean Connery, believe you me...

So there you have it. Not only yet another in the long lineup of unsuccessful translations of comic books to film (and take it from me, just because it's easy doesn't mean that it's either good or a good idea) but unprincipled and blatent ripping off of characters from movies that have become cultural myths. Not cool. Not interesting. Not remotely worth seeing. Even the cats didn't save this one, sorry.

And the sequel will be out in 2006...spare me.