Coppola is a bloodletting haberdasher--like a practical joker at a funeral

Rating: 6/10 (30 July 2006)

Bram Stoker's tale of Dracula was never like this: an 1890s realtor is kept prisoner in the Count's castle while the vampire covets and stalks his fiancée (who is perhaps the reincarnation of a lost love) and her best friend (who proves to be just a snack). Anthony Hopkins is a half-cocked Van Helsing, Gary Oldman is the Vampyr as a Punk Rocker. Outre theatrics, imaginative camera-tricks courtesy director Francis Ford Coppola, but this is hardly a landmark retelling. Plenty of visual foreplay, but what the film lacks is a narrative that makes sense to us and doesn't shut us out. Coppola has become a rock-video auteur--not necessarily a bad thing--yet there's only a trace of music here, while the majority of the assembled talent is smothered by a conceptual design which knows no boundaries. Eventually, the whole thing is irrelevant. **1/2 from ****