Brainless anti-fun

Rating: 3/10 (13 October 2005)

I was told beforehand that this movie sucks big time. I did not believe. "Hey, it's a summer movie -- it's not supposed to be a timeless classic, but just some brainless fun you can eat your popcorns by," I thought. "It has a promising leading duo and a lot of monsters, so how bad can it be?" Well, the answer turned out to be: utter crap. Two major problems: the script is awful (which should not surprise anyone, and this alone would not trouble this sort of movie at all), and the cast is horrible. Two notable exceptions are Hugh Jackman and Kate Beckinsale: Jackman is a fine choice for the leading role, but he is not given much to work with, and Beckinsale looks nice and spicy, but she's given nothing else to do. They also seem to have absolutely no chemistry between them. The rest of the cast is so recklessly awful you'd be hard pressed to find such lack of talent in the most backward theatre of the planet.
Richard Roxburgh is the worst Dracula ever, by a margin the size of the moon. Apparently his vision was that Dracula became such a loathed figure because of his loud-mouthed, goofy manners. He is a complete failure, as the performance is stupid, annoying as hell, and yet not at all funny. And it gets worse: both Kevin J. O'Connor as Igor and Shuler Hensley as Frankenstein's monster do their very best to top Roxburgh in a half-witted noisy overacting contest. AND they all are outplayed by Dracula's brides, who hiss, make faces and screech like rabid wombats.
There is nothing entertaining. There is nothing scary. There is nothing funny. There is just a lot of pointless CGI and an abundance of annoyingly bad performances. This is not brainless fun, this is just brainless.
3/10
(P.S. Oh, and the score which some people here seem to claim makes this movie. If you have seen more than 20 movies, you have practically heard this soundtrack, only probably a better version of it. The score is nothing else but an uninspired two-a-penny variation of the most clichéd string arrangements for spectacle-type movies. It does in no way break the film -- it is probably the closest call to a proper element this movie has -- but most definitely it also does not make this film.)