Isn't it time to give the Nazis a rest? I mean, obviously when a guy like Mel Gibson's dad comes around and starts insisting that the Jews were just making the whole Holocaust thing up, it's time for somebody to bitch-slap him so hard that his great-grandchildren are born red-faced and bisexual. It's just that I'm sick of the Nazis as cartoon movie villains. I've got their whole credo down. Personally, I think when writers get lazy and can't think up good villains, they just fall back on the Nazis like lapsed alcoholics downing shots.

If during the following basic plot summary you say "why?" or "what?" don't bother trying to figure it out. Just accept that what I'm writing here is how the movie is. It doesn't make any sense. It's not historically accurate. I don't have the answers for you. I don't understand it myself. Most of all, I don't care to understand it. I'm just relaying information.

Hellboy (Ron Perlman) was some kind of demon-spawn summoned by Rasputin (Karel Roden) during World War II to bring about the end of the world. Rasputin opens up this big hole between worlds and a little Hellboy emerges. Fortunately, he's saved by a young Professor Bruttenholm and raised to be a good guy while Rasputin is sucked through the portal.

Now it's many years later and Hellboy is all grown up and fighting demons, working for the FBI and the Division of Paranormal Research (or something like that). Professor Bruttenholm (John Hurt) is old and dying and so he hires a young agent named John Myers (Rupert Evans) to come on board to take his place.

Hellboy fights some demons who multiply after being killed and pines for firestarter Liz Sherman (Selma Blair). Though clearly a Type A personality and quite manly, this does nothing to help Hellboy when it comes to Liz. Hellboy has the physical gifts of a superhero, but the mental problems that all the rest of us have.

"Hellboy" is hypnotically dull. The demons that Hellboy fights are incredibly boring and while director Guillermo del Toro would have us enveloped by this unusual world he's created, it seems ridiculous that FBI director Tom Manning (Jeffrey Tambor) can do no better than offer up agents who are basically Star Trek red shirts going off to the slaughter every time they show up to battle demons. Hellboy emerges from a fight to find all his supposed friends ripped to pieces, yet he seems nonplused.

Frankly, I think Hollywood is going through a phase here: too many superhero/comic book movies. They're all starting to blend together: the characters, the demons, the jokes. It's "X-Men" meets "Indiana Jones" or "Mystery Men" meets "Schindler's List." Whatever.