Horrific script. Nice sets. Mainly rubbish.

Rating: 2/10 (4 June 2004)

How not to make film: 1. Inherit stable of well loved horror characters from Universal, each with their own fascinating (literary and cinematic) heritage and decide to throw them all into a film. Sounds promising....
2. Ditch virtually all the well established lore and tradition surrounding these characters in favour of stupid unsatisfying premise and threadbare plot. 3. Receive 200 million dollar budget and decide to spend *all* of it on special effects. 4. Ask video game designers to come up with a dozen or so set-piece action sequences(shooting vampires with repeat action crossbow, swinging from rope to rope, obligatory coach-and-horses 'driving section'). Base entire film around these. 5. Cobble together a "story" that attempts to fill in the occasional few minutes between these action scenes with some sort of coherent narrative. Fail. Badly. 6. Realize story is so bad that film is actually a comedy. Sprinkle disastrous hotch-potch of story with lame attempts at humorous one liners. 7. Add 'comedy sidekick' character in vain attempt to distract audience from gaping holes in plot. 8. Add Kate Beckinsale in tight black trousers for same reason. 9. Demand all actors speak in a ridiculous "generic foreign accent" for that 'school play' hammy feel. 10. Throw in a few references to other films (Bond, X Men) etc. in final desperate attempt to engage audience interest.
I genuinely feel sorry for the art designers on this film. They came up with some very impressive and visually stunning sets, only to see them employed in the service of a truly rubbish, rubbish story. Dracula had all the menace and charisma of an insurance salesman, and Van Helsing himself looked mostly bored. The only character with any semblance of interest was a sympathetic portrayal of Frankenstein's monster.
Stephen Sommers needs to watch a few decent films, and take notes on how they establish and build characters and construct a narrative (almost any Spielberg would prove very instructive). Spewing out a dumb action film for yeah-haaah simple-minded teens with no attention span is soiling the horror canon.
Please don't let this man direct or write anything else till he's at least mastered some of the basics of making a film, rather than "some stuff that will look good in the trailer".