A visual treat but woefully miscast--and plagiarized without credit

Rating: 7/10 (15 April 2008)

A floridly stylized and overheated, even operatic (Italian opera of course, this being Coppola) take on the book, but one of the most faithful. Gorgeously designed and visualized, yet it barely survives its casting. Did FFC really think that Winona Ryder and Keanu Reeves were the best available?? On the one hand Ryder handles the complexities of Mina's character (far greater than in the book) well, while Reeves is as wooden and inarticulate as ever, but neither can do an English accent to save their lives. Coppola underlines this lack by pitting them against authentic Brits like Sadie Frost and Tony Hopkins' cheerfully demented Van Helsing. The other Yank, Tom Waits as Renfield, does much better. The real casting disaster is Gary Oldham's Drac. Coppola and Hart have re-imagined this monster into one of the great Romantic (in the Byronic sense) characters, a combination of Richard the Lionheart, Don Juan, Faust and the Flying Dutchman, yet he's played by a rather plain, short and strange character (in the definitely non-Byronic sense) actor who tries so hard to avoid imitating Lugosi that his accent is possibly the ugliest in movie history, and sillier than Kevin Costner's attempt at a Back Bay drawl in "13 Days." Where was Daniel Day Lewis? Anyone check with Patrick Bergin or Stephen Rea? Oldman is fine as Old Weird Drac in the castle but my girlfriend (a sucker for romance at all costs, see my review of "GWTW") began shaking her head the moment he started playing up to Mina in London, and by the end of the flick had developed a crick in her neck. Too bad, too--the forbidden romance, which BTW was ripped off from the protean Dick Matheson's version with Jack Palance (which he took from the Karloff "Mummy"), works well to unify a story that sprawls all over the place, and gives the ending real power. I'll close with a note on the DVD: the 5.1 is particularly effective in the castle, with creepy little scratchings and whispers and sounds all over the back channels. And the Coppola commentary is fine, he indulges in much less whining than in his "Godfather" apologia. ADDENDUM: According to his commentary, Ryder brought Coppola onto the picture, so she was a given. Too bad they couldn't get her a decent dialog coach to give her a Brit accent at least as good as Angelina Jolie's, if not the quality of Lisa Eichhorn in "Cutter's Way" whom I was amazed to find was a Yank, not a Brit.