Jane Austen's "Destroy All Monsters!"

Rating: 2/10 (22 October 2005)

This film is a brilliant and psychologically complex treatise on Victorian era social mores as seen through the eyes of Van Helsing, a rapscallion character who overcomes his impoverished beginnings to climb the social ladder and eventually reach the pinnacle of high society. It's his cockeyed optimism that allows him to go from rags to riches with an almost Dickensian charm, but in classic irony normally suited for Shakespearan tragedy it is also that very trait the leads him on a path to danger and horror. There's also brilliant social satire as seen through the colorful characters from Transylvania, who bring both shock and scathing black humor in their representation of the nomadic, exotic outsiders than so many proper Victorians feared would infiltrate and poison their gilded society.
Just kidding, of course. "Van Helsing" is wall to wall special effects and hammy acting dancing across poorly lit set designs. Classic movie buffs are turned off in the first few minutes with the over-the-top alleged "homage" to the black and white Universal horror flicks. The plot is arbitrary and pointless, though with so much going on and Kate Beckinsale in tight corsets, I suppose this does have some entertainment value for ten year-old boys. I watched this one rainy Saturday afternoon and left twice to clean my bathroom and mop my kitchen floor, and I didn't miss a thing.