NOT BRAM STOKER'S Dracula!!

Rating: Null/10 (14 December 2004)

Francis Ford Coppola robots gush about this and that is fine. This movie is NOT Bram Stoker's Dracula. The X's and O's are the same in some spots but the movie's message is just not like the book's. First off, the movie is anti-Catholic church and reaches for the pathetic plot point that Dracula became a dark vampire because of the church and that it was the church's fault. Typical Hollywood to try and attack the church and pass it off as a man's novel, a man who is long since dead and can't defend himself. Second, the ridiculous plot that has Mina being Dracula's long lost soul mate is also not in the book. That this movie can't follow a simple point that Dracula is the villain and not the hero, as the movie maintains, is pathetic. The movie is manipulative, Hollywood bilge. By the way, the scenes of beastiality (Dracula "giving it" to Lucy are also not in the book.
In the book, Dracula merely drains Lucy and is his typical "man dressed in black self." Mina and Lucy kissing are also not in the book. This movie is NOT Bram Stoker's Dracula in that the message is closer to hardcore pornography then Stoker's God loving novel. If Hollywood wants to produce this weird mess than that is fine as that is it's choice. But saying that it is Bram Stoker's Dracula when it clearly is not is nothing but cheap plagiarism. The movie is nicely filmed otherwise but Winona Ryder is awful and confused here. Gary Oldman is great but Hopkins' Van Helsing is a goof and an outsider. He is like the book in his delivery but not in his emotion.
4.5/10