Van Boring

Rating: 4/10 (9 October 2008)

I didn't expect Van Helsing to be Citizen Kane. I didn't WANT it to be Citizen Kane. Popcorn movies have a dignity and a reason to exist, and there is place for a cheesy werewolf/vampire feature in cinema.
Sadly, Van Helsing is a bloated mess. It bombards the audience with a moronic plot full of arbitrary rules, stupid McGuffins and absurd twists. A convoluted story should not be confused with texture or genuine complexity; for these movies, simplicity is a virtue. Instead we get a lot of mumbo- jumbo about the relationship between werewolves and Dracula, an antidote, Frankenstein being necessary to reanimate the count's spawn, and other preposterous rules.
However, what drives a stake through Van Helsing (har har) is the mediocrity of action scenes. With an overuse of awful CGI and a cartoonish "everything can happen!" attitude, they are pointless and incompetent. See the vampire attack, with Beckinsale's Anna bumping everywhere like a ping-pong ball in a tornado, without any consequence or sense of danger. And that silly werewolf kept springing out of nowhere like a furry Jack in the Box puppet.
One is tempted to say Van Helsing resembles a video game, but the truth is no major modern video game is so badly plotted and devoid of atmosphere. It's more like one of those platform games from the middle Nineties, with lots of jumps and lots of swinging on vines.
Jackman as the titular monster-slayer comes across as sedate and moribund. Beckinsale provides the eye-candy, so the camera can PG-13 leer at her tight trousers and cleavage, admittedly quite a sight. Roxbourgh has an original take on Dracula: he portrays the legendary monster as a campy, effete clown. Wenham as the Q-like comic sidekick/inventor is the only mildly likable character in this whole disaster.
4/10