This is not Bram Stoker's Dracula

Rating: 5/10 (4 February 2006)

This is a fine film, quite enjoyable, good performances throughout (except Keanu, of course, and Hopkins is a bit too over the top), but one thing it isn't, it isn't Bram Stoker's Dracula. Not even close.
Dracula, as described by Stoker, is hardly "The Great Lover." If anything, he's the mean, sadistic, evil, rotten, wife-beating son-of-a-bitch bastard that some poor women stick with despite all. Nowhere in the book does Dracula do a single thing that could be described as loving, tender or romantic.
As written by Stoker, "Dracula" can be considered a "Love Story" only as far as that the title character does manipulate his misguided victims to believe they actually "love" him in a very masochistic way -- but there is never any love or anything like love coming from Dracula directed towards his victims at any time: The epitome of a classic highly dysfunctional relationship.
Only Christopher Lee ever came close to capturing his true character (Bela, in his own way was pretty good on this score as well).
Dracula is a horrible, mean, evil, brutal, self-centered, sadistic, egotistical, manipulative wife-beater type of guy -- at least as written by Stoker. The romance in some of the "Dracula" films (i.e.: Frank Langella, Gary Oldman, etc.) is just catering to women who like those type of guys but refuse to see what they really are. A kind of "co-dependency film-making" when you get down to it.
In a very real sense, Coppola's Dracula is like making a movie where Hitler is "The Great Romantic Lover." And just as absurd! I defy anyone who has read Stoker's book to find even a single passage that disputes anything I've written above. Hell, I look forward to seeing it.
Still, a very entertaining flick.