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Van Helsing
Warning: Expletives Ahead...
Now I know for sure, as if I didn't already know, now I really know. Everything Stephen Sommers touches turns to complete shit. First he destroyed the Tomb Raider franchise right out of the gate then he made a pair of second-rate wannabe Indiana Jones movies in the Mummy franchise and don't get me started on Deep Rising. The only spark of hope came from The Scorpion King a spin off that should have sucked but didn't. Don't get me wrong it was no Conan: The Barbarian but i enjoyed it. This should have been a really cool idea: create a bad ass version of Van Helsing and pit him not only against his old nemesis Dracula but against a bevy of classic Universal monsters. It should have been cool, and even though their were sparks of coolness, it mostly just sucked.
Van Helsing (Jackman) has lost his memory. He remembers nothing of his past other than his current work as a super natural assassin for a secret group within the Catholic church. He is sent out to either capture of kill super natural elements that threaten the world at large. We first see him squaring off against Mr. Hyde of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde fame. The battle is fun and energetic and very enjoyable, to bad it's mostly down hill from here on.
Back at his secret lair he has a scene straight out of any Bond movie crossed with Alias where he gets his new arsenal of special gadgets to go and do battle against Dracula, the most powerful enemy he has faced yet. A family line has promised that no one in the family will go to heaven until Dracula is dead. There is only one left in the line, Anna Valerious, played by mediocre genre movie queen Kate Beckinsale. The two team up to do battle against Dracula and his minions including The Wolfman, Igor, and Frankenstein to stop his evil plot.
The formulaic predictable moments throughout this movie are to numerous to count including the fact that we know the issue of Van Helsing's memory will play an important role in the story and the weapon the monk version of Q has built that he doesn't know what to do with will probably save the day. The inevitable "twist, I like to call it a red herring myself, making Van Helsing more than he is supposed to appear just plain sucks, it detracts from the character. He just should have been a bad ass vampire killer, maybe make him seeking revenge for the death of a family member at Dracula's hands, keep it simple. Maybe even have him face off against that family member and be forced to kill him or her. There's opportunity for great action and drama while keeping it simple.
There are underlying Indiana Jones influenced discoveries by Van Helsing and his very annoying, and not funny when he's supposed to be, or not even when he's not supposed to be, assistant with no investigation to back them up. These discoveries just happen all of a sudden when the story is ready to progress. Oh they were hinted at earlier in the film believe me you know they are coming.
So, yes the story blows disgusting green chunks like Linda Blair with a crick in her neck, what else? Well the dialogue is supposed to be melodramatic and campy, sort of subtly spoofing the classic Universal films, or just funny. It's more like throw away pages of dialogue written by George Lucas on a drunk. Oh ok there were some fleeting moments of humor here and there and few instances of well used classic lines from Universal's golden age, but mostly Jackman and Beckinsale are flat throughout the film. I don't blame them, I like them both. I blame Stephen Sommers.
What did I like? I liked the costumes. Beckinsale wears this leather attire so much I'm starting to think she brings her own clothes to the sets of her movies. Jackman's weathered Vampire Hunter D thing was pretty cool too. I also really enjoyed the score. It had that perfect balance of high adventure and melodrama all at once. I will admit there were a few good jumps and some good action sequences as well but these were easily ruined by the franticness of the rest of the film. The CGI you asked? Well, it's highly stylized which I like, but a lot of it looks like crap which I don't like. So there you go.
There was the spark of a great idea here, it just got crushed under Stephen Sommers boot heal into a overly long, unfunny, horribly paced mess. I could have found a way to enjoy the film more if it hadn't ran for over two hours! I think I've figured it out, Stephen Sommers sucks as a writer and a Director and currently Stephen King can't write himself out of a cardboard box, what's similar? It's those Stephens spelled with a "ph" instead of a "v". It makes sense to me now! Oh hell that means I'm doomed to mediocrity myself! But as long as they keep writing so will I, sucky or not.
Oh yeah, one more thing, this movie sucks, it really does.
2/10
-Stephen Lackey |
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Van Helsing
Review: 2/10
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