Pan's Labyrinth is a hard act to follow

I went to see Hellboy 2 : The Golden Army at the cinema yesterday. I did enjoy it a lot, but I did feel it could probably have been a bit better. It did look stunning at times, with some excellent special effects and very inventive creature design and the action scenes were pretty good as well. The characters were likeable and interesting, there were some very amusing scenes and the background mythology was interesting. So, it did a lot a things very well but at the end of it I still felt it could have been better than it was, I think the biggest problem is that while the plot is reasonably entertaining it isn't really particularly compelling, there's little dramatic tension or suspense, it is quite predictable and the character development is fairly minimal. It's still superior to 95% of the other superhero or action movies out there, but it's a bit frustrating because I think it had the potential to be a great movie rather than just a good one. Perhaps Guillermo Del Toro's previous film is partly to blame for some of the disappointment, Hellboy 2 may match the visual inventiveness of Pan's Labyrinth but in terms of how compelling the story is, there's not really any comparison.

I think the above paragraph probably sounds a bit more negative than I really feel, I did like the film a lot and I'd still recommend it.