Very, very bad.

Rating: 3/10 (16 May 2009)

Let me say that I am a huge fan of Hugh Jackman, Kate Beckinsale and David Wenham, and I don't really have a bias against popcorn flicks or mainly action and CGI-based movies. I enjoyed The Mummy series, and I expected Van Helsing to be somewhere along the same lines: good actors, action adventure, a few snappy funny lines and a very basic but suspenseful storyline.
It is not.
It is very, very bad.
The film has a very flimsy storyline, gaping plot holes, and terrible dialogue. The CGI is very poorly done and is glaringly obvious, to the point where you are unwilling to forgive it. At first, I was very happy to suspend disbelief and continue along as the plot took me. And then, very early on in the film, the plot totally vanished, and I was left saying, "What the hell is going on?" Count Dracula requires the machine invented by Dr. Frankenstein (along with his monster) to bring to life his offspring who, because he and his brides are undead, are naturally, born dead. This makes no sense, but you can kind of accept it and that's not a problem. Dracula has lost Frankenstein's monster, however, and has been trying to make the machine work with Werewolves. It fails. At the same time, he's trying to kill off the Valerious family, the last remaining survivor being Kate Beckinsale's character, Anna.
Anna is by far one of the absolute worst heroines I have ever seen in a film. She is completely useless! Nothing she EVER does in the ENTIRE film is AT ALL HELPFUL. She prevents Van Helsing from killing the werewolf that her brother has turned into, she is a major disruptive factor in his killing the vampires, and is constantly offering nothing but incredibly annoying and petulant dialogue. "I don't need any help" (directly before displaying how totally awful she is at defending herself against vampires, and directly after completely botching an attempt to kill a werewolf), "We've been trying to find Dracula for 400 years, I doubt you can do it in 2 hours" (moments before Van Helsing and Carl discover the door to his lair which was so glaringly obvious it's impossible to miss it), "You fool! Nobody knows how to kill Dracula!" (after Van Helsing's failed attempt to kill Dracula, after she has refused to disclose any information whatsoever that would be helpful).
Van Helsing is no better, really, but would have been much more interesting if his storyline was actually, I don't know, EXPLORED instead of just HINTED AT CONSTANTLY? At the beginning, we are told that he has no memory of his past, and grabs at the chance to go to Transylvania for the opportunity to learn more, but right at the point that Dracula is attempting to TELL US, he says, "Some things are better left forgotten" and then kills him. Thanks, that's great, but what about the audience?! Maybe we want to know? Dracula himself is a complete failure at being scary, and is a complete failure at being camp. The characterisation is just bad.
And the gaping plot holes? The parts of the movie that just don't make sense? There are SO MANY. Like, they leave Transylvania at a full moon, and then, by the time they hit Budapest, it's already 2 days until the next full moon? It took them A MONTH to get there? Okay, I accept that, but explain to me how it took them only a few hours to GET BACK to find Dracula's lair? How about how at the end, Dracula is apparently missing a finger, but he hasn't been missing a finger for the rest of the entire movie, and even after that moment of revelation, he miraculously has the finger again? And how does a man who is undead and can heal continuously, even not have a finger to begin with? The ending is sappy and unbelievably stupid. Oh, there's CGI Anna, up in the clouds with her family, near the sea (a throwaway line of dialogue earlier that made no sense, and was apparently put in just to enhance the "emotion" of her funeral) which is glittering beneath a sunset. And then, as Van Helsing and Carl leave, back for Rome, they walk out, towards land, towards...oh, the sunset again. It wasn't cheesy enough with just ONE sunset, I guess.
AVOID THIS MOVIE. IT IS BAD. FOR REAL.