Everything that's wrong with Hollywood

Rating: 3/10 (24 December 2006)

Yes, I know that's the kind of comment usually reserved for polo-necked film students when they're discussing anything that doesn't have subtitles. But I don't even own a polo-neck, and I think I can prove my point, that Van Helsing represents the reason that a lot of people don't bother with big-budget Hollywood movies any more. So, in no particular order:
1. No plot. Now come on, writers are cheap, at least in Hollywood terms - even the legendary Joe Esterhasz only got about five million per movie back in the day. So couldn't someone have told Stephen Sommers that it was time to lay down the pen and let someone else write this? That way, we might have got a plot that made the slightest bit of sense. And don't tell me that doesn't matter - that might be true if your name is Monty Python, but this is trying to be a fairly serious movie, and half the time even God couldn't work out what was going on.
2. Characters. Movies work better with characters that we care about, rather than boring, one-dimensional tortured heroes/heroines, cutesy sidekicks and cardboard villains. I've seen all these characters before, and I didn't care about them the last time, either.
3. Dialogue. In seventy years, we've gone from 'Creatures of the night - what sweet music they make' to 'We are both part of the same great game, Gabriel! But we need not find ourselves on opposing sides of the board.' And that line was ripped off from The Man With The Golden Gun anyway, which brings me to....
4. Recycling. For paper cups it's good, for movies less so. The movie starts with Frankenstein's monster, which is about right, since this whole film is about seven other films stitched together. There are bits of Bond movies, bits of vampire movies, bits of everything you've ever seen, just about. Original ideas? Nah, sorry, we're out of those. Have some leftovers from old Hammer Horror movies instead. Defenders of this movie will likely claim that this is Stephen Sommers paying a homage to movies of the past. It isn't. It's him grabbing great big handfuls of past movies and stuffing them into this unholy mish-mash.
5. Pointless CGI. Lots and lots and lots of CGI. And then some more. Even in scenes that don't need it at all - for example, Mr Hyde didn't need to be a ropey-looking CGI giant, he could have been just Robbie Coltrane, only made a bit larger. You know, like the Harry Potter movies did it. Instead we had one of the most unconvincing fight scenes ever. CGI only works if it's used in the service of a good story, or if it's genuinely jaw-dropping stuff. Neither is the case here, and that's true of way too many recent movies.
6. Cracked actors. Good lord, but there are some bad actors around these days. The two leads here are as good as they can be with this kind of material, but the support are often dire. Special mention goes to David Wenham, as the cute joke character who made me want to kill him after about seven seconds, and particularly Richard Roxburgh as Dracula. You have to see Roxburgh's performance to believe it. There simply aren't words in the English language to describe how shatteringly bad it is.
7. All action. You are allowed to have scenes between action sequences to do stuff like characterisation, scene-setting, that sort of thing. Van Helsing just goes from one action sequence to the next, with maybe a few minutes of Basil Exposition-like waffle in between, and then.... hey, werewolves! I'm sure 12 year old boys everywhere loved this movie, and since Hollywood seems to believe that everyone in the world is a twelve-year-old boy, they'll keep making crap like this. You could have had ten Brokeback Mountains for the price of one Van Helsing, but as long as people keep coming to junk like this, Hollywood will keep making it. In the end, the market works, and audiences get the movies they deserve. Unfortunately.