Entertaining, but homage or rip-off?

Rating: 7/10 (13 May 2004)

Van Helsing was a decently entertaining movie. It does not start off too well, but improves once the action picks up a little bit. It does seem to use parts of other movies, but not necessarily monster movies as you would expect. I definitely noticed scene or line similarities with LOTR: The Fellowship of the Ring, The Fifth Element, and The Good, the Bad, & the Ugly among others. This is not a good thing. It's OK to pay homage to classic movies of the same genre, but to take from a spectrum of different ones does not help a movie.
A lot of eye-rolling scenes, but entertaining enough. 7/10