Just can't help but love this one:)

Rating: 8/10 (24 March 2016)

I've got a soft spot for Stephen Sommer's Van Helsing. Yeah its basically a theme park ride put on film, and Hugh Jackman is about as appropriate and qualified for the role as a stick, but there's something shamelessly fun about the way it sheepishly tosses just about every golden age monster movie character it can think of into the mix, resulting in quite the chaotic two hours of CGI, perplexing plotting and trannsylvanian accents worthy of Count Chocula. It's so ambitious it even throws in an extended Alien reference near the end, and one has to admire that. Jackman plays a youthful, athletic version of the crusty old vampire hunter, introduced to us in a London opener in which he's pursuing a rambunctious Dr. Jekyll/M. Hyde (Robbie Coltrane). Soon he's whisked off to darkest eastern Europe with his monk sidekick "" (David Wenham is a hoot) to investigate vamps, werewolves, monsters and all kinds of ooey gooey stuff. There he meets Anna (Kate Beckinsale), the shapely leader of a clan of monster hunters, whose brother is the leader of a pack of werewolves causing trouble in the area. This all leads to eventual confrontations with Frankenstein's monster (Shuler Hensley) and Dracula himself played with hammy rock star glory by Richard Roxburgh. It's all topsy turvy stuff and Director Sommers clearly struggles with making it a cohesive result, but where he falters he makes up for it by making it knowingly schlocky fun with just enough camp to elicit a twinge of nostalgia for the monster flicks of yore.