Beautiful to Look At, but Mediocre

Rating: Null/10 (8 May 2004)

In the 1880's, Van Helsing is a James Bond-type for a secret wing of the Catholic Church. Instead of fighting SMERSH or SPECTRE, he fights the Universal back catalog of monsters (Mr Hyde, a Wolfman, and most notably Dracula, who has a Bond bad-guy idea for destroying the world).
The movie is absolutely beautiful to look at -- the production design is a pitch-perfect evocation of Hollywood horror movies from the Thirties and Forties, but grander -- it deserves an Academy Award nomination. The movie has been lambasted in some quarters for an over-reliance on CGI special effects, but I thought they were fun to watch, for the most part -- although the Mr Hyde is too close to the Frankenstein for comfort. The action sequences (and there are plenty) are fun to watch, too, although the final battle is disappointing: here the critics are right, Sommers over-relies on CGI effects and quick cuts and it vitiates any sense of excitement we should be feeling.
The movie *should* be criticized for an absolutely terrible script. Nobody should go into VAN HELSING expecting WAR AND PEACE, but this doesn't even meet minimum standards of quality. Dracula's evil plot is not very well explained, and I don't understand how various other characters should be fit into it. Motivations of the other characters are all over the board or inexplicable, even with painful-to-watch scenes of characters looking off into the distance and explaining them. I also could have done without scenes where characters explain the background to each other for the viewer's benefit; without silly, too anachronistic to be believed dialog (at one point VH tells somebody he does what he does for "self-realization"); and without the obligatory hip/"cocky" rejoinders that just fell flat.

It also *should* be criticized for some pretty bad acting. Again, my standards for this kind of movie are not high, but Sommers can't even seem to meet the low bar. Jackman can be good but he's not good here -- he seems painfully wooden, like he could never figure out what tone to take. David Wenham, as The Comic Relief, is spectacularily unfunny, and Richard Roxburgh, as Dracula, is achingly bad, maybe the worst portrayal of this character I've ever seen. Only Beckinsale is good -- she has the necessary light touch for this kind of semi-schlock. I spent a lot of the movie wishing that her and Jackman had switched roles.
I wanted to like this -- I like Jackman and Van Helsing was always my favorite character in DRACULA. But there's not a lot here. Avoid.