Director:
Stephen Sommers
Starring:
Hugh Jackman
Kate Beckinsale
Richard Roxburgh
David Wenham
Release: 7 May 04
IMDb
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Van Helsing
BY: DAVID PERRY
If there’s anything good to come out of Van Helsing, it’s the
movie tie-ins. Where most movies have McDonalds happy meal toys and action
figures, Van Helsing gets DVDs that are worth suffering through this film at
least once. Sets of The Wolf Man, Frankenstein, and Dracula, as well as
their sequels, are now sitting in video stores around the country, a fitting
choice to detox following a multiplex screening of this horrible Universal
film.
Like last year’s League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, the premise of the
entire film is built on the bastardization of important literary characters:
they still remain in late 19th Century but their snide remarks and
technologically advanced gadgets are straight from today. Worse yet, the
dimensions created by Jules Verne, Oscar Wilde, Robert Louis Stevenson, Bram
Stoker, and Mary Shelley has been lost in the phantasmagoria of CGI hokum
and flimflammery. Of course, Universal has done this before with their
beloved property by letting the same director, Stephen Sommers, turn The
Mummy into mindless action and nonexistent storytelling.
What’s more, no one here seems to really care, with the possible exception
of Richard Roxburgh as Dracula. Hugh Jackman jokes lurks around the place
waiting for the next Tonys or X-Men film to roll around; and Kate Beckinsale
looks ravishing, but her attempt at a Romanian accent has all the effort of
Joe Piscapo in a Merchant-Ivory production. Where The Mummy films at least
had actors who enjoyed themselves, the boredom of the audience is completely
reflected on the screen. It’s a sad day when I prefer Rachel Weisz and
Brendan Fraser over Jackman and Beckinsale, though poor comparisons are par
for the course with this film. Steven Sommers is no James Whale or Todd
Browning, and Van Helsing doesn’t even measure up to The League of
Extraordinary Gentlemen, much less the films it cribs from.
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