Promising moments but tried to do too much.

Rating: Null/10 (12 June 2004)

I found this film disappointing almost purely because it had some excellent elements that were crowded out in an attempt to pack too much into to smaller space. Firstly what was good about the film. The opening sequence was excellent and really grabbed my attention with a black and white recreation of the famous sequence involving a mob of Villagers burning down a windmill with Frankenstein's Monster in it, this sequence was excellently filmed although this may be due to the strength of the source material rather than the director. Secondly the actor Richard Roxbrough who played Dracula was fantastic and gave across a fantastic air of charming evilness with a particularly good speech about the heartrates of victims as he is about to dispatch them. The settings were also excellent with plenty of nice touches such as a semi built Eifel Tower in the Paris sequence. However the film was spoilt for me by the music which was an inappropriate trance type selection and by the seemingly obilgatory comedy side kick monk who added nothing whatever to the plot. Lastly Hugh Jackman seemed to be struggling to add anything to Van helsing which wasn't his fault as his character was utterly one dimensional. The film wasn't bad exactly and filled a dull Sunday afternoon but it had to much chaff nd didn't develop its strong points. In fact a series might have been better with Van Helsing encountering each Monster in turn.