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 Chris' Review: "What a load of CRAP!" What? A bit blunt, you say? How about... "I'd sauté my own eyeballs rather than endure the agony of having to watch this pile of tripe again!" All right, all right...even the memory of this movie is painful.... so let's get this review over with. I don't know who wrote this or who directed it. Personally, I don't want to know. I actually got up and walked out before the credits just so I wouldn't have to embarrass the people who were involved in this movie by remembering their names. The script was just ridiculous, filled with holes, inconsistencies, hackneyed attempts at tear-jerks... just plain pathetic. ("I've never seen the sea.") During many of the emotional scenes, I found myself laughing out loud... not a good sign. It would have been one thing if it had been meant to be cheesy dialogue... but it wasn't... and that just makes it sad. So my laughter was more in embarrassment for the actors than for the humor of the moment. The entire movie was like that. One second you could swear they were going for a cheap gag... and the next, you realize that it was meant to be a sincere moment. Not to mention, they tried to re-write all of monster lore... for instance, Frankenstein's monster still looked like a giant, stiff-limbed corpse (although updated for a more modern look), an obvious throwback to the Boris Karloff movie monster... but he has an almost Shakespearean articulation to his speech that comes from the original Mary Shelly story. C'mon, pick one or the other, guys! Another terrible inconsistency was the vampires. Sure, when they were being subtle, they could teleport across the room and surprise the hero, but once they get into a battle, for some reason they lose that ability and are constantly running after their adversaries. I will remind you that these are just a couple of the problems. I really don't want to think about it anymore. It's like thinking about what happened to a burn victim. Then there is the direction. Really, what was this guy thinking? You start out doing a cheesy homage to the old monster movies, the next second you expect to be taken seriously, then you throw some Monty Python style comedy in... oh, but please take this final embrace of the main characters with profound emotion... oh, look, exploding baby vampires! It just didn't work. Again, the holes and inconsistencies could actually be attributed to the direction instead of the writing... I'm not sure... but with the script being so bad, the direction sure didn't help. He tried to cram too much in... tried to take you on a rollercoaster of emotion that just ended up being a train-wreck of ambiguity. One thing I can say... there were some nice sweeping shots... none of this jump-cut shaky-camera bilge like in "Man on Fire". Then there is the acting. Actually, maybe it would be better to say, the absence of acting. Seriously, I've seen high school plays with better acting than this. Hugh Jackman was ok, but he's no award winner and the burden of this gigantic piece of trash was too heavy for him to carry all by himself. Plus, they had him doing absolutely ridiculous things. I lost count of the number of "Wolverine" references. (He turns into a werewolf, there is a *snik* as his claws pop out, he scrapes them across a piece of machinery and while giving the enemy a glaring look, light shines off his claws! *gag*) The only sparkle of ingenuity in this film was perhaps "Igor" who was masterfully undertoned with a kind of cynical, dry, English humor. Unfortunately, he only appears for a few scenes and his make-up is so bad that you're distracted the entire time from his performance. I'm not even going to go into the rest of the actors... I'm sure that they'll appreciate me not mentioning their names as they'll want to distance themselves from their horrible performances. The one bright spot of the movie could be the artistic direction. I loved it. The visuals were wonderful. Whomever came up with the concepts really needs a pat on the back. The combination of old-school monster movie paraphernalia and modern special effects all tied together for some beautiful scenes. I was actually making mental notes for some of the props for my Halloween parties. I will also mention that for the most part I enjoyed the special effects. The vampires in particular were great.... very fluid transformations... but the special effects weren't consistent and some ended up looking like high priced video game effects. Even if they had been perfect, along with the rest of the visuals, it couldn't possibly save this movie. As Tobi so eloquently put it, "A turd wrapped in pretty paper is still a turd." I couldn't agree more. So all in all, I'm urging everyone, when this movie comes on DVD, to buy a copy just so you can burn it. It will be better for future generations to never realize that we are capable of this. I anxiously await the sequel and the television series... because they can't possibly be as bad as this was. I give it 8 thumbs down... one point for artistic direction and one for "Igor"... other than that, I almost walked out in the first 45 minutes of the movie. Please, even if you are offered a free viewing, don't see this movie. I'm seriously considering suing the studio not only for my $1.50 back, but for the 2 hours and 25 minutes of my life that I will never get back. I could have spent the time doing things that were so much more fun. I could have been doing dishes, mowing the lawn, getting a root canal...   Jim's Review: When seeing movies such as this, I often have to stop and wonder...At what point did the people involved realize that they were making a truly awful film? I mean, surely...Somewhere along the line, Hugh Jackman (Van Helsing) had to look at the way things were going, and think to himself..."Oh my god. I'm in a shitty movie." He simply COULDN'T have checked out the dailies, and been happy with the way things were turning out. The sins of this film are grievous, and many, so I'll do this review in outline form. 10 reasons why "Van Helsing" sucked seven varieties of monkey ass: 1) Is it camp, or not? - All the hallmarks of high camp are here...Corny overacting, dreadfully ham-fisted dialogue, ridiculously high levels of melodrama...And yet, the entire proceedings reek of everyone taking themselves way too seriously. Of course, for camp to work, the audience has to be in on the joke. And the only jokes in this film were the acting, writing, and direction. Count Dracula alone was so flamboyantly over-the-top that you got the sense that he'd discovered that chewing on scenery was more satisfying than biting necks. 2) Plot holes - You could drive a mack truck through them. The lunar cycle is completely whacked, the very German Dr. Victor Frankenstein somehow has a castle in Transylvania, and for some reason, horse-drawn carriages have a propensity to burst into flames and explode, apropos of absolutely nothing. Oh, and Dracula claims to feel no emotion, to be hollow inside...Yet he yells, giggles, and sighs his way through every turgid scene. And the rest of the plot, such as it was, was so ridiculously convoluted that it wasn't even worth following. Something about Dracula using werewolves to harness the life-force of Frankenstein's monster to reanimate his undead children and - Oh, screw it. Trying to pick your way around the gaps to follow a laughably stupid story simply wasn't worth it. 3) Anachronisms - Dracula's castle is wired with an electrical harness. Generators churn in the basement, next to gauges and dials on a large, metal resistor box. Anna (Kate Beckinsale) apparently stops between scenes to re-apply her makeup and iron-curl her hair. Van Helsing spouts Freudian psychobabble about "self-actualization" and "demented psychopaths." IN 1865. I half-expected Van Helsing to pull up to Dracula's main gate in a '45 Chrysler. 4) Special Effects - I remember reading somewhere that "Van Helsing" set some sort of record for the number of special effects shots it used. Yay. Good for them. However...If you're going to make your film a special effects bonanza while neglecting things like storyline and character development...Then the least you can do is make the special effects GOOD. Between visible wires, shoddy clipping, and bad animation, there was so much badly-done CGI in this move that it ranks as the most obviously computer-generated film I've seen this summer...just ahead of "Shrek 2". 5) Inconsistency - Okay, so Van Helsing was the original Vampire hunter. Anyone with a taste for literature knows this. But this film would cast him as an all-around monster-buster, on call with the Vatican. So, right away, they're screwing with the source material. And, apparently, all of the usual vampire-dispatching methods the legends have passed down are ineffective. Vlad shrugs off fire, stakes, holy water, sunlight, garlic, and crucifixes like just so many mosquitoes. And the only thing that CAN apparently kill him is so eye-rollingly, infuriatingly unbelievable and convenient that I literally slumped in my seat when it was revealed. 6) Too much - Has the "Batman" franchise, which crams multiple villains into each sagging-under-its-own-weight film (and fails at it) taught us nothing? Apparently not. This is a Universal film, so they seemed intent on wedging as many of their old monsters in as possible. We're "treated" to scenes of Van Helsing battling Frankenstein's Monster, Mr. Hyde, Count Dracula, Werewolves, Gravediggers, and flying demons. What, couldn't they have shoved The Mummy, Bride of Frankenstein, and some zombies in there, too? Well, maybe they're saving those for the sequel. *(Shudder.)* 7) Leaps of Logic - "But of course! There's a secret DOOR to Dracula's castle! And I know exactly where it is! But of COURSE! All of these sacks of goo must be Dracula's children! BUT OF COURSE! THAT must be how we kill him! It all makes sense now!" Well, no. Not really. When the characters slap their collective forehead and arrive at ridiculous conclusions for which there is no context and even less foreshadowing, they may win, but the audience loses. 8) Unintentional Humor - What does it say about a film when its "serious" moments draw more laughter than the comic relief character...Who managed to be patently unfunny? Whether it was feats of derring-do that were so unbelievable that they were boring, character interaction meant to be passionate that in fact displayed zero chemistry, or non-sequitur plot twists, they were all sadly hysterical...Considerably more so than the lame jokes spouted by a mincing Carl the Friar (David Wenham). 9) Rip-Offs - Whether it was Carl playing a sort of period-piece Q to Van Helsing's Bond in an underground Vatican gadget-lab, Dr. Frankenstein (Samuel West) shouting "IT'S ALIVE!", or a green field of energy coursing over an enormous room full of slumbering life-pods ala "The Matrix", you'll undoubtedly find yourself asking, "Where have I seen THAT before?" Homage is one thing. Theft is another. And, finally... 10) Bad acting, bad writing, bad direction - Like I said...Is it camp, or not? If it were, the stilted dialogue, hammy flamboyance, and overblown emotion might work. But there's still no excuse for drifting accents, horrible plot, and god-awful direction. I remember reading an interview with Alana Enaya, who plays one of Dracula's vampire "brides", who said that director Stephen Sommers was constantly telling the actors, "More, more MORE!" when it came to their performance. That ought to tell you everything you need to know. It's not as though I expect what's ostensibly an action / monster movie to be reserved or even plausible...But this thing was like a packed bullet train to nowhere, riding with broken brakes on greased rails: Too fast, too full, no destination, and doomed to be a train wreck. So, I'm forced to give "Van Helsing" 8 thumbs down. Everything about it was bad, bad, bad. The only things that saved it from a full-on score of ten down are the innate likeability of Hugh Jackman, the undeniable appeal of Kate Beckinsale's boots, and the concept and design of Frankenstein's Creature, who was actually pretty cool, and deserved to be in a much better movie. BackHome - Info - Reviews - Map - Message Board - Photo Album |
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