For all the SFX, this one just SUX

Rating: 2/10 (5 June 2004)

Even though I love Universal's classic monster movies (as well as Hammer Films' versions, including Kronos, AKA Captain Kronos: Vampire Hunter, I decided to chance Van Helsing. I mean, "how bad could it be?" Famous Last Words...
I did have reservations. For one thing, how could this new film manage putting (almost) all the classic Universal monsters into one movie? Even Universal had a hard time pulling that off -- in fiilms like House of Dracula, House of Frankenstein, et.al. The studio finally got it right when they added Abbott and Costello to the mix and turned the formula into a comedy. Would Van Helsing be a comedy? I wondered...
I held out hope that what little excitement I'd seen in teasers on TV would translate into grand scale entertainment, and that Van Helsing might not be a *great* movie, but might be a fun summertime distraction. WRONG.
All this movie offers is a "video-game-on-steroids" type of experience. This comes through on a number of levels, but one of the most obvious is demonstrated by the way the "heroes" leap and spin and tumble and jump and bounce and twirl and plummet and so on and so on...in ways so humanly impossible that after the first or second "fight scene" I was thinking, "these vampire-fighting characters have no mortality whatsoever; they're invincible...they're BORING!" Any potential thrill of seeing them put in situations of peril was quashed -- after all, you can't kill a cartoon character, and that's what these characters are: totally one-dimensional. The leads in Van Helsing are so ridiculously superhuman, in fact, that it becomes clear that they're never in any real danger no matter how "scary" or "startling" the imagery attempts to be. Even when mortality finally catches up with one of the characters it's not that upsetting. After all, this film is only a video game on steroids...
I am forced to compare it with Conan The Barbarian (arguably another comic-book hero film) or Superman: The Movie (wholly based on DC comics lore), either of which greatly surpass Van Helsing for having soul at the core of their productions. Van Helsing is hollow and gassy. It simply lacks heart.
The barrage of SFx is dizzying and because there is so much action with little time-out for recovery, the effect is mind-numbing. Wearying. Tedious. Cheap-shot moments with werewolves leaping at the viewer startle you to consciousness every so often, but otherwise the pace is monotonous. I found myself checking my watch more than once wondering when the "ride" would end. It felt like it was going around in circles at one point! The storyline (what little there is, and of emininent unimportance) is rattled off in quick handfuls of sentences by the main characters, so quickly that it's clear the film makers have little interest in the fantasy elements except if they can be employed to set up the next elaborate action sequence. The plot, as it is, is totally flushable anyway... This film plays not like a film but like a hugely overstyled video game. The camera follows the action the same way it might in a video game. The characters move from one level to the next as in a video game. The result is pretty ugly, obvious, and tiresome. Worse still, the monsters culled from Universal's prestigious history bear no resemblance whatsoever to the legends created by Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, Lon Chaney Jr., et. al. What was the point in Universal's making such a big deal about "reviving" these characters? I know, I know...marketing. Marketing (with a capital M). Well, this film is all about marketing. You can smell it like the stink of a rotting corpse even before you enter the cinema. It almost seems pointless to critique characters in such a one-dimensional production, but it must be said that Van Helsing the character rings hollow, and Hugh Jackman does little to elevate the cardboard hero any higher than absolutely necessary. Any number of talentless nitwits could have played the leads (or the monsters) in this film, and in some cases it seems nitwits were actually cast. No doubt the nerds out there who actually play video games all day long will feel this is a superhero they can sink their teeth into -- and even (dare I say) "identify with" ... The sad fact is, not even great performances by better actors could transform this film into something more than the slick marketing trash it is. SFx is certainly the REAL star of this show. But it's an overbearing star, continually bludgeoning you into senselessness with one daring set-piece piled on top of another. There's no time, if any, to recover from this, and the effect is numbing -- somewhat like the bloated feeling you get after eating too much. By the time the film is over you're simply grateful the roller-coaster has stopped long enough for you to get off.
I was grateful to see the current state of digital effects, which have come a long way in recent years -- and continue to astound. But in this case it was overkill. I was very impressed with a burning windmill in the beginning of the film, one moment I can still recall. There were a few other stand-out moments, but I can't remember those now because they were swept away in the flood of other effects and inane story development.
Just what a 13 year old boy might enjoy, one might say (and clearly this is the target audience since nipples have been left off the breasts of the female vampires). But the 13 year old boy inside me decided Van Helsing was junk. Just a slick marketing tool to get people to spend money at Universal Studios, or buy a dumb video game, or some action figures, etc. Because of this method of film making Van Helsing stands to make some money, but can't be considered much value for your buck.