Maybe remove the 'Bram Stoker's' from it

Rating: 6/10 (2 July 2008)

This movie is fine, seriously, if you like Dracula and have never read the book (nor do you ever intend to) and are completely ignorant about Vlad the Impaler, go ahead, you'll love it.
I, unfortunately, do not fit into either of those categories.
Dracula, in the book, is a *really* evil guy, there is no love between him and *anyone*. He's not mourning his lost love (one might say he's incapable of it). He's not going to London in search of anything. He's a sociopathic monster.
Instead, we get a lonely guy who just wants a hug and who doesn't want to hurt people.
No characters are spared.
Both Lucy and Mina are turned from virtuous women into, and I'll try to put it delicately, 'women of the night', ready to spread their legs for anyone who happens by so we get a few boob shots.
All of the men are turned into idiots at best, vindictive psychopaths bent on destroying Dracula for no particular reason at worst.
The part that gets me, though, is the connection to Vlad the Impaler. I, for everything I've read, all of the research I've done, can't fathom feeling sorry for him. It is written that Bram Stoker himself chose Dracula because he was (at the time) fairly obscure, and anyone who *had* heard of him would think "I say! That's nasty!" Case in point, his most pronounced victory over the Turks was accomplished by seriously freaking them out. He stopped a smaller force and took them, and anyone else he could find, put stakes up their bums (and out their mouths) and made a little forest. As I mentioned, the Turks were *seriously* freaked out.
As for his love story, he killed one of his wives, according to legend, by cutting her from snooch to neck to prove she was pregnant with another man's baby. No word on the results. He remarried.
That's not much with the movie though.
I feel like my largest problem is the creative licenses taken, and the places where it *isn't* taken. OK, I can't avoid spoilers anymore.
Every single sex scene in the movie, especially where Dracula is a big werewolf, I could do without. John Harker getting a BJ from the concubines, please.
Dracula had, what they call in some circles, his Rape the Dog moment. It was taken straight from the book. It fit with Bram Stoker's version, not with Coppola's: he goes out, finds a random baby, and brings it back to feed his concubines. Maybe he doesn't finish it all by himself, but make no mistake. Dracula starts off by eating a baby.
On the other hand, when Dracula is climbing down the wall, yes, they say in the book 'he climbed down like a lizard' and that is exactly what Gary Oldman did. I would have, I don't know, added some wind. He just looked like someone crawling on a flat surface. Just because *he* isn't affected by gravity, doesn't mean his massive cloak is the same.
What was the deal with the mice on the ceiling? Are they vampire mice? Are they trying to say that the wall climbing wasn't a vampire thing, but because of the liquid John Harker found? This movie felt more like Anne Rice's Dracula. Maybe they're sociopathic killers of the night, but they just want to be loved. Humans are bad for wanting to kill them.
If, however, you are halfway sane and have no plans of ever reading either the original book or anything about Vlad the Impaler, you'll love it. You even get a few boob shots.
By the way, if you've seen the baby and *do* want to read the book, by all means, go ahead. The two have very little to do with one another.