Talk about manufacturing a destiny.

Let’s say you felt saucy enough to name your child Hellboy. Would you be so ignorant as to wonder why the big guy would grow up to despise you, let alone himself?

-This is what happens in the new film “Hellboy.”

When a battalion of Hollywood World War II allies charges into a secret island of Hollywood Nazis, they discover something extremely abnormal. The Nazis are opening a portal to some other world, or perhaps some area in space. By doing this, they will unleash an evil on the world like no other. But just as the portal is opened, the allies attack. They defeat the Nazis rather quickly and destroy the portal but not before a few things could sneak through.

The allies are aware of this predicament because they are in the company of a wild-eyed scientist named professor Broom (yes, Broom).

Instead of destroying this monstrosity as the allies wish to do, Broom decides to win it over by feeding it Baby Ruth bar after Baby Ruth bar. As if he couldn’t get any nicer to his new friend, he names it Hellboy.

Years later, we learn that Hellboy was taken to where he belongs — America — where he is held captive in a cell by the now-FBI-employed professor and used to fight crime of the paranormal nature. He sits in a room way too small for his mammoth size, spending most of his time hating himself and his strange-looking posterior. When he’s not filing down his horns so he can “fit in,” Hellboy is waiting for a large red light to flash accompanied by a piercing alarm to go off. Such a warning means that it’s time for Hellboy to go out and defend the humanity that is so quick to shun his existence.

What makes it such a shame is that Hellboy is a great character. His dialogue, cheesy at times, is very well delivered by Ron Pearlman, an actor dug out from some Hollywood grave. I smiled each time I heard Hellboy get smashed and answer, “Oh, crap.”

Pearlman brings the bad attitude that Hellboy should have right out of that rubber suit. He’s perfectly cast; he’s there to give the hard edge that’s usually missing in these popcorn adventure films.

What’s not so unusual about a film like “Hellboy” are the endless commercials (Bud Light, Baby Ruth, the “Hellboy” soundtrack) and flashy CG that tries to cover plot holes. This can mean only one thing — the start to the summer movie season, which seems to attract the public’s finest.

During my screening, a woman accompanied by her very young children answered her cell phone and decided to have a conversation about who she was “supposed to pick up” after the movie. As I turned around and stared at her in disbelief, I couldn’t help but wonder if the government actually has a secret Hellboy program of its own. If this were the case, I would love to see a Hellboy dispatched to each theater to smash his giant “wammer” onto any person as ignorant as this sad woman. I can see it now …

“Oh, crap. No signal.”