The accent is on bad accents

Rating: Null/10 (19 October 2003)

***There are spoilers in this review.***
Francis Ford Coppola is one of those people who works best as a starving artist. During the production of the Godfather films, he was constantly kept on the fence, wondering whether he would be fired the next day. The result? Two brilliantly executed films, among the best of American cinema. Will Coppola ever meet or exceed his early directorial efforts? Thirty years and many mediocre films later, it seems doubtful (witness `Peggy Sue Got Married'). Maybe he needs to lose all his money so he can be a starving artist again, and won't produce another `Jack'. I wonder what kind of fantastic film could be produced then.
Anyway, I don't know what I liked least about Dracula: Keanu Reeve's fright wig halfway through the film, the uneven direction, the disembodied voiceovers, the terrible accents, the disorienting double exposures, or the general bad acting. How do you mess up Dracula, one of the most popular novels of all time? Given millions of dollars and an army of talented people, Coppola manages to screw it up. That aside, the costumes and sets are rich and lavish, immersing you in the place and time, and the special effects and makeup are quite good.
Gary Oldman is a wonderful actor but, like Reese Witherspoon or Jennifer Jason Leigh, his talents are best displayed at the hands of a capable director who can harness the histrionics. Here he lets loose and hams it up. Do we really need to hear Dracula cry? Or watch him in orgiastic ecstasy as Mina laps up his blood? I'm shuddering as I type this.
Winona Ryder is too petite, fragile, and snotty to play movie heroines. She has beautiful features, but her tinny voice does not carry very well, and despite what must have been hours and hours of English accent coaching, her California hippy inflections stubbornly remain. And who can ever understand the inexplicable popularity of Keanu Reeves, whose acting ability consists largely of open-mouthed stares. His mouth is open for roughly one-third of the film. And poor Anthony Hopkins, saddled with his own terrible accent, looking inordinately lost and befuddled in this messy film after his groundbreaking role as Hannibal Lechter in the Silence of the Lambs. Heh-heh, the only English actor in the bunch, and they give him a lousy accent. Wait, I'm forgetting the watery-eyed Richard E. Grant, who somehow manages to never, ever look comfortable in any film he's ever done.
Because much of the movie features people standing around and talking, the overall impression I got of this film is that it's an updated version of those old Hammer movies. Did Coppola watch back-to-back Hammer films as inspiration for Dracula? I half-expected to see Christopher Lee somewhere in this mess, standing somewhere and talking, and drinking a brandy, in a Hammer-like way.
To sum up, this film is alternately funny and campy as it strives to reach dramatic depths and continuously comes up short. The film is stuffed with half-finished scenes that have little to do with each other, leaving a curiously empty feeling not unlike the way you feel after watching a short-film festival.