Scary in all the wrong ways

Rating: Null/10 (8 February 2002)

This movie had such potential, but failed to deliver in practically every way imaginable. For those who say it is faithful to the novel, all i can say is, what novel do you mean? Certainly not Bram Stoker's classic, that's for sure. Just because it might contain some of the same lines, which the writers obviously threw in just to give it a semblance of Bram Stoker's novel, does NOT make this "Bram Stoker's Dracula". Okay, the sets were okay; the costumes were okay; the music was okay; even some of the acting was okay - but 'okay' doesn't really cut it does it?
To re-hash a point which most of the reviews seem to agree with - Reeves is laughably mis-cast as Harker, yes for his pathetic attempt at an English accent which he seems to forget altogether at some points, but also because he is just too young to play the part of Harker with conviction. His acting just makes a bad movie even worse. Ryder's accent was almost as bad, just very poor indeed. How could they not cringe when they saw (and heard) themselves in this movie? Oldman was okay as Dracula, and Hopkins was nothing to write home about either. There were points where you just wished that Dracula would suck the life out of both of them and give us all a good laugh! Yeah, pretty scary alright? Scary accents, scary acting.
This could have been a decent attempt at a good novel , but with a totally different cast who had actually taken drama classes. Summary? 5 out of 10. Rent it for a laugh. Mwuh huh huh huh huh!!!!