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BY MAGGIE SCOTT

He’s got a temper; he loves beer, candy, kittens and Liz, his wife; and, he’s horny (although he keeps them shaved down to big stubs).

Director Guillermo del Toro’s second film installment of the adventures of the popular comic character, “Hellboy II: The Golden Army,” gives our favorite hero from Hades many fearsome opponents and few opportunities to regale us with his distinctive brand of wit.

Del Toro nearly marginalizes “Big Red” (Ron Perlman) with a host of creepy creatures, menacing monsters and a vicious villain. Seriously smitten by his wife (Selma Blair), Hellboy does his best to please her; but lately, little tiffs have turned into major flare ups…literally.

Liz is pyrokinetic; translation, she becomes a human torch. Down in the grumpy dumps, Hellboy’s mood is not improved when the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense faces the fearsome Prince Nuada (Luke Gross) rebellious son of an underground kingdom holding a centuries-long grudge against humans.

After teaching a snobby auction crowd the true value of the crown as a cultural artifact, Nada proceeds to slaughter everyone with a swarming band of flesh and bone-devouring “tooth fairies” (they go for the teeth, first). With much bone-crunching and bullet-blasting, Hellboy wades into the fray, with short-lived success. Nuada is not easily deflected from his goal, even when his own sister, Princess Nuala (Anna Walton), comes down on the side of co-existence, not extermination.

While Hellboy is busy dealing with Liz’s secret-harboring moodiness and the publicity-abhorring kiniption fits of his boss, Tom Manning (Jeffrey Tambor), the Bureau’s aquatic empath, Abe Sapien (Doug Jones), is falling for the princess, who is under their protection and who has hidden the last missing piece of the crown.

Hoping to ride herd on Hellboy, Manning sends out a distress call to Washington, and they send their top expert in ectoplasmic research. Johann Krauss (voiced by Seth MacFarlane), won’t let the snide (“Germans make me nervous”)

Hellboy mess with him for too long, before he teaches him a lesson in the locker room (one of the few truly hilarious sequences in the film; the other being a boozy, sorry-for-themselves duet by Abe and Hellboy).

Del Toro’s flights of cinematic imagination are entertaining up to a point, but it’s plain to see that most of the story’s creativity went into special effects. Particularly disappointing is the lack of chemistry between Hellboy and Liz. Compelling as tentative lovers in the first film, they are puzzlingly circumspect around each other as spouses (she’s constantly pecking him on the check or theforehead…what’s with that?). That’s a bummer, because the combination of Hellboy and Liz is, well, HOT!

A Universal Picture release, rated PG-13 for violence, language.
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