A Spit in the Face to all Classic Monster Fans

Rating: 2/10 (11 May 2004)

There are three things I liked about VAN HELSING: the first ten minutes, Kate Beckinsale's ass, and... actually, those two are it, unless you count each butt cheek separately.
What is with Hollywood? Why are they incapable of making action or horror movies of anything remotely resembling quality? Why do they feel that a couple of "popular-this-month" stars and overuse of lousy CGI effects make a movie? The fact that this movie is doing as well as it is just tells me that general American audiences are morons.
The director of this abominable piece of crap deserves to be drawn and quartered. I have never seen a movie that set up so many potentially great scenes, then proceeded to do nothing with them. You've got a movie featuring Dracula, The Wolf Man and the Frankenstein monster, and the monsters never fight? Frankenstein's monster gets to beat up a female vampire in an all-too brief scene, Dracula and Van Helsing-turned-werewolf also duke it out in a mind-numbingly dull CGI-laden battle that looks like a video game. And why does Dracula have to turn into a giant bat monster to fight a werewolf. Wouldn't it have been more interesting to juxtapose Dracula in his human form duking it out with a hulking werewolf? Sure it would, which, I guess, is why they didn't do it. They're not interested in pleasing monster movie fans. They're interested in holding the attention of video game-jaded pre-teenagers. ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN had more effective action in it.
The beginning of the movie is great. Shot in beautiful black and white (which contemporary audiences are far too stupid to appreciate), it plays like a loving tribute to the classic Universal monster movies. However, it comes off like a mean joke to everyone who actually believed the filmmakers who swore this movie was in the spirit of the Universal and Hammer monster movies, when it suddenly turns into your typical post-MATRIX pseudo-goth action flick.
Hugh Jackman and Kate Beckinsale are both incredibly dull. Other than Beckinsale's aforementioned buns, which look great in her tight pants (which I'm sure were all the rage in early 1800s Europe), she is as boring a character as I can recall having seen in a movie. The screenplay is so awful, though, it's hard to blame it all on the actors. Van Helsing's sidekick, supposedly there for comic relief, is one of the screen's most hideously obnoxious characters in many years.
It's two hours of throwing glitzy hubbub at you to trick you into thinking something is happening, and about five too many scenes of people swinging through the air on wires. This movie sucks. I can remember, in my lifetime, when Hollywood had balls. It wasn't afraid to offend. It wasn't so obsessed with making money as to forsake making a good movie in the process. VAN HELSING is a good example of everything that is wrong with Hollywood. Too much money, too overblown, hokey humor, targeting the general demographic rather than the true fan, sacrificing intelligence in favor of spectacle. The filmmakers' contempt for their audience is worn on their sleeve.
And who thought Mr. Hyde should look like Shrek?