Where's the Mummy??

Rating: 4/10 (10 October 2004)

Putting aside that Van Helsing perverts some of the best terror stories of all times (Dracula, Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde, Frankenstein, The Werewolf...); putting aside that some of the jokes in the script seem to have been written by some Benny Hill wannabe; putting aside that some performances are really pathetic (Kate Beckinsale's accent!! ---grrrrr--); putting aside that it is supposed to be a terror movie but scares no one; putting aside that the love story between Van Helsing and Beckinsale's character rather looks like a bad parody; putting aside that the strong point of VH, the special effects, are nothing that spectacular (at least they're not innovative at all, like Matrix's, or Minority Reports', for example -and some make-up tricks are really grotty- )... putting aside too many things, we can say this is a (sometimes) entertaining movie, full of crazy action, way too long (2 hours 15 minutes), and with too many boooooms, and bangs, and ratatatata, ... OK, I guess that was the intention of the producers, and of Sommers himself (The Mummy, The return Of The Mummy, The goddamn mummy strikes back -he's sort an specialist of s***ting on classic terror stuff) ; but still I think you can make such a poor product like this spending 100 times less money than they have.
Conclussions: they could've made a nice Playboy Gothic-video using the female cast in Van Helsing, and maybe give the rest of the money to someone with ideas, talent, and something to say. That of course would happen in a perfect world. In this world of us they prefer to let audiences (the real targets of this kind of trash) think that Van Helsing was a shooter, that Dracula and Dr. Frankenstein knew each other and shared some bears and some "brides", and that Mr. Hyde was the cigar-smoking punk cousin of The Hulk. OK, then. To hell with Shelley, to hell with Stevenson, to hell with Stoker... Well, to hell with you, Mr. Sommers.
My rate: 3.5/10