Van Helsing

Much like the Frankenstein’s Monster that they gratuitously threw into this one, Van Helsing is big, dumb, shambling and poorly cobbled together.

Dracula’s been done to death, but if you really tried you could still find some interesting ways to approach it. Particularly with a focus on the character of Van Helsing, who in Bram Stoker’s original novel is an affable physician who happens to do some vampire hunting on the side when the need arises. With this project in the hands of Stephen Sommers (The Mummy, the other The Mummy, The Mummy that didn’t have a Mummy but had The Rock instead) what we get is Hugh Jackman as a blatant ripoff of Vampire Hunter D, facing down this nonsensical mishmash of nearly every popular Victorian horror creature. All of which Dracula has somehow taken control of in a story so inane it isn’t even worth recapping. There’s Mr. Hyde, a Wolfman, Igor, Frankenstein’s Monster, all of whom are thrown in just for the purpose of CGI laden fight scene after fight scene. It’s like Castlevania : The Movie basically.

So it’s your typical Big Loud Generic Dumb American Action Movie with Loads of CGI to try to distract us from noticing the lack of coherent plot, compelling characters, quality acting, etc. I don’t mean to come down too hard on Hugh Jackman because I basically enjoy the guy’s work but here he’s got pretty much nothing to work with, when he’s onscreen he just kind of squints his way through in a standard Clint imitation while constantly pulling ridiculous and anachronistic tools and weapons out of his utility belt. The whole thing’s completely formulaic, you can’t give a damn about anyone or anything that’s going on because everyone has super powers, even the Kate Beckinsale peasant girl character, and you know pretty much exactly how it will all end. There’s plenty of smirking, one-liners, awkward dialouge sequences tacked in between the action scenes to fill time, and some attempt at a medevial parody of Q that just comes off annoying, and the whole thing’s accompanied by the same Generic Hollywood Action Symphonic Score In The Key Of John Williams that you’ve heard in thousands of other movies.

It’s just a Popcorn Movie, you say? Why should I be so offended by it, you ask? Let me tell you something. Making a movie used to be about something more than profiteering. Money always counts for something with the studio, yeah, but there was consideration for artistry too, and the legacies of everyone involved. Over time it’s shifted away from that and over to this cookie-cutter formulaic bullshit where the whole thing is written primarily so that it will look good on Burger King cups and provides enough material for the action figure makers and the Playstation game programmers to work with, and the director doesn’t give a fuck about his reputation as long as he’s making enough to live in Maui and snort coke off the asses of $1000-an-hour hookers or what the hell ever. It’s cynical, it’s gross, and it’s offensive that studios actually expect me to pay them to do this. Now it’s about 80% movies like Helsing here and 20% cinema that is actually worth a damn. You take these iconic movie monsters, creations that deserve some respect and care in their handling, and instead they wind up in this video game posing as a movie. So to hell with this piece of excrement, it deserves harsh word because it’s part of what’s ruining film. Millions of dollars that go to garbage like this are being diverted from much more worthy projects, and what it does is ensure that American cinema remains the horrible joke that it has devolved into. This movie is boring, stupid bullshit and I hope Stephen Sommers never makes another movie ever again. He has no goddamned idea what made these monsters such compelling fixtures in the general consciousness in the first place, I bet dude can’t even name all the authors of the books that they originate from.

Links :

* Ebert and Roper review