Vampire love story

Rating: 5/10 (29 August 2015)

The movie was quite overblown in comparison to the book. The book Dracula was never popular but when the idea of vampires became in vogue there was a resurgence of interest. The book in no way is linked to Vlad Tepes. Stoker used the word Dracula as the characters name because of its basic meaning and not because of a person. This is a point that shows that Coppola did very little research on the book and went along with previously believed ideas that have been debunked.
The choice of actors to portray the parts was not a good one. Winona Rider is a good actress but didn't fit the part of Mina in my opinion. Both Oldman and Hopkins over-act throughout the whole movie. It is an opulent and stunning rendition but too much for my liking and why I gave it a lower vote. It isn't enough to make it a good movie if the title is Bram Stoker's Dracula since it is Coppola's idea of the character Stoker created and is only partly true to the book. I realize it is only an adaptation but if one is calling it Bram Stoker's then the idea of Vlad the Impaler should have been left out of the story line.
The character in the book is Hungarian and of a warrior class and not Romanian at all. At the time the book was written, Transylvania was not part of Romania. Another thing that comes up is garlic but it was garlands of garlic flowers, not cloves that are mentioned in the book and should have been used in the movie. I did see some flowers around Lucy's neck but also the cloves which isn't correct.
In the book a box comes for Van Helsing containing garlic flowers which he uses to protect Lucy. "Garlic flowers are essentially the flowering seeds of the garlic plant. They emerge at the tip of the garlic's above-ground stem." In the case of the book, it was white garlic flowers and not the cloves. The essence of the story does have to be gleaned since the book is written in epistolary style and why it wasn't that popular. The overall movie is fine but not the best vampire movie compared to many others. Anne Rice was mentioned but there were books well before hers where vampires burst into flame. It became a popular idea used by many writers just not in this story, although it has been used in some theatrical versions of the book.
Overall, if you like a fanciful version of Stoker's story this would be the one.