Bloody bore

Rating: Null/10 (18 May 2004)

There really isn't too much good to say about this flick. The action was virtually non stop, so non stop that it made this two hour film seem to be four hours long. It would have worked a little better if a little more thought had gone into things like story development and PACING.
Hugh Jackman and Kate Beckinsale acquit themselves well, for what they get to do, which is damn little.
Richard Roxburgh, who plays Dracula does not, coming off as rather bland in comparison to the two men most associated with Vampire roles. Call him camp if you will, but Bela Lagosi did a much better job and so did Chistopher Lee. They both had personality enough to make them interesting antagonists. This vampire was more a copy of one of those super villains that populate James Bond movies. He was never believable, nor particularly interesting. A guy whose only goal is to suck the blood out of you so he can go on living turns out to be far more interesting than a meglamanic who wants to rule the world. Who woulda thunk it? The answer is, anyone who understands drama would have.
But the James Bondian villain angle leads to the big problem with this film and so many other big budget Hollywood films these days. When you lay out $170 million or something to produce and market a film like this, you try to cover your bets and I guess the best way to do that these days, beyond the computer graphics and the over hyped sound track, is to copy things that have been successful before.
So they dreamed up this Ven Helsing guy (actually stolen from old Universal monster movies) and copied his character from James Bond movies. They copied the opening sequence from the original "Frankenstein" film (but tried to pawn it off as a loving tribute). They copied the three flying wives of Dracula from just about ever World War Two war movie ever made in which Japanese Zeros attacked a defenseless village. They copied the the chamber where the baby Draculas were incubating from the "Alien" movies.
They probably copied a lot of the action from other current movies, but I rarely go to see them, so I can't cite the source.
But from what I can figure, the largest budget item in the production package must have been for tracing paper, because they copied an awful lot.
They didn't spend much on the script though, because there was virtually zero character development. Of course, these stories don't exactly revolve around character development. They are pretty much targeted at a poorly educated, over stimulated youth market that drifts from one cheap thrill movie to another week after week. And Marx thought religion was the opiate of the people!
Overall, this one was a big waste of time. Go back and look at those old Universal monster movies and you'll have a much better time.