A solid and fun monster hunting movie to usher in the summer season

Rating: 6/10 (12 May 2004)

I did myself a great disservice by reading many of the negative newspaper reviews of the movie Van Helsing, because I couldn't watch the first twenty minutes without noticing the supposed flaws of the flick. However, that passed and I was able to enjoy the 2 hour-10 minute film (2 hours and 23 minutes if you can't the end credits). Let me say that the critics are being unnecessarily harsh on Stephen Sommers and Van Helsing. It is not an Oscar-worthy that will be remembered by the AFI thirty years from now, but it is a film that will take you out mind.
The plot is a very simple, but not so simple as to offend your intellect. Hugh Jackman (of the X-men movies and the Tony-nominated musical "The Boy from Oz") plays Gabriel Van Helsing, a monster hunter for a secret sect of the Catholic Church. From what we see of the sect's headquarters, it isn't only the Catholics who are employing Van Helsing to save the souls of those possessed by evil. It is in these secret headquarters hidden in the Vatican City that the audience learns that the Church rescued a broken and amnesiac Van Helsing several years ago, and it is through his monster hunting/soul saving that he will recall his forgotten past. (POSSIBLE SPOLIER HERE!) We also learn here that his past goes as far back as 800 years from the present 1888 of the movie.
Van Helsing is then sent to Romania to help a gypsy princess, played with butt-kicking and back-flipping furor by Kate Beckinsale, defeat Count Dracula. Kate Beckinsale's Anna Valerious is the last one in the family who is cursed to eternal damnation unless Count Dracula is killed by them. Dracula and his three vampire brides have it out for the Valerious clan, and the reason why is a surprise. During their mission to find and destroy Dracula, as well as his undead children that he is trying to bring to life with the help of Dr. Frankenstein's technology, Anna and Van Helsing fight vampires, the werewolf, an angry crowd, and Frankenstein's monster before befriending him.
Like "The Mummy," director Stephen Sommers does not allow his heroes to have a healthy fear of their enemies. They have too much of a jaded, 21st Century attitude. If the characters aren't even a bit afraid, how is the audience supposed have a suspension of disbelief? Aside from this flaw and the obvious set up for sequel through several of Dracula's allusions to Van Helsing's past, this is a solid and fun summer movie. It is to his credit, that Sommers doesn't make the movie as serious or as dark as other vampire films of recent history (like "Interview with the Vampire," "Bram Stokers' Dracula," and "Underworld"). Hugh Jackman and Kate Beckinsale play the swashbuckling roles with the right balance, and Shuler Hensley's Frankenstein's monster gives the movie a soul. In helping to keep the film light, Richard Roxburgh does an excellent job of camping up Dracula but not to the point where he can't be perceived as a formidable foe. The movie is not as overblown, bloated, or as weighed down by special effects as the critics would have you believe. Aside from the CGI that makes the simplest human movement appear as supernatural and too perfect, the movie makes good use of its stunts and F/X budget. This movie is a way to usher in the lazy, hazy days of summer. Just pray they don't do a sequel.