BORING

Rating: 3/10 (12 May 2004)

I wanted to watch the movie although I had heard a lot of bad things about the film. Unfortunately all those things are true.
The opening sequence (shot in black and white) is quite okay, but after that it gets worse. When in the beginning of the movie Van Helsing fights some Hulk-like monster I was already bored and thought "just kill it and let's get over with", but unfortunately the fight lasts quite a while. I could not at all relate with the characters, neither with Van Helsing nor with Anna Valerious, even Count Dracula remains bland and uninteresting. Besides you don't learn anything about their motivation. Also the fact that Van Helsing mostly fights CGI-beings and does not get even a scratch during those fights does not exactly further the tension. In addition the movie is quite foreseeable. And Carl as Van Helsing's sidekick/comic relief is not funny at all and the one liners the characters get to speak are just stupid. The only reason I didn't leave the cinema before the end of the movie was that I was curious about the final fight between Count Dracula and Van Helsing, but even that fight was not worth the wait.
The acting was okay I think, but I had the impression that in a bad movie even decent actors look bad.
The CGI was way too much, human adversaries might have been much more interesting to watch, so it was more like style over substance. Maybe they should have saved the money they spent on the CGI and invested it in a decent script instead.