Rated PG-13 for nonstop creature action violence and frightening images, and for sensuality.
132 Minutes
Written and Directed By: Stephen Sommers
Staring: Hugh Jackman, Kate Beckinsale, Richard Roxburgh, David Wenham, Elena Anaya
He’s the first one to kill a vampire in over a hundred years. I’d say that’s earned him a drink. -Anna
Synopsis
The notorious monster hunter is sent to Transylvania to stop Count Dracula who is using Dr. Frankenstein’s research and a werewolf for some sinister purpose.
Review
You really want Van Helsing to be good, but at no point is it even mediocre. It’s simply unforgivable. The cheesy visual effects, the overdone CGI, and the awful adaptations of the some of the greatest monsters history and the imagination has ever created littered this effects driven film, like an untrained dog making a mess of it’s house. From the gate it’s apparent the CGI is way over the top. Not at any point does the Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde character look realistic. This detachment of CGI created characters from the living and breathing character’s was a relentless force that never welded together.
Beyond a CGI nightmare, the theatrical way Dracula, Anna, and many of the other character’s were projected was not just an insult to film, but to the theatre as well. They were trite interpretations that were accidentally mocking the mythical characters instead of paying reverence to them. Dracula should be malevolent and charismatic, but instead seemed floundering and whinny, as though he had discovered the Emo movement two years before the rest of the world.
A saving grace was the chemistry of Beckinsale and Jackman, and David Wenham. Even though Beckinsale as Anna became a complete contradictory of herself, portrayed as a self sufficient warrior, but then every other moment she was near capture or death by arrogance or stupidity and needed to be saved by Van Helsing. It was a wonder she survived to age two without his help. Nonetheless her and Jackman’s interactions, along with much needed comic relief from Wenham makes the movie almost watchable.
So much tragedy almost happens so many times, that by the time the real tragedy has arrived and the real danger is before you, the finale has flopped. It’s the infallible fable about the boy who cried wolf. Van Helsing is that failure along with many more. The real tragedy lies in the time wasted a such an intolerable excuse for film making. After three viewings the conclusion is clear: it’s absolutely horrific, but not in any of the fun ways you want it to be. This and League of Extraordinary Gentlemen have taken on too much and too many strong and magnetic character’s and mythology that they bit off way more than they could chew. A colossal failure is all Van Helsing was.