Eye candy so sweet, it'll send you into the fantasy film buff's equivalent of a diabetic coma.

Rating: 6/10 (12 December 2004)

Eye candy so sweet, the sugar shock will send you into the fantasy film buff's equivalent of a diabetic coma. As a medically necessary antidote, follow this movie up with a chaser of "Dancing at Lughnasa" - or some other equally slow paced yawner - so that you can bear to make it through another unfantastical day of your normal, boring, real human life without unconsciously resorting to wrapping your teeth around some hapless unsuspecting co-worker's neck in search of a desperate shot of excitement - vampire style.
No sh**, man! This single movie has enough computer generated graphics special effects to power a thousand pyrotechnical, body-morphing, fantasy world conjuring, beast-enabled fight scene plastered, adrenalin pumping, camera swishing, sorry-we-forgot-the-storyline action spectaculars. It's wall to wall on this one. Not content with a mere two hours of non-stop CG assault on your senses, they even found a way to squeeze entire full length computer generated action movie features between each frame. Try it. Slow down the movie enough on your player and you'll see what I'm talking about. It's insane! (OK, made you look. Nye, nye, nye-nye, nye) You need to watch this movie inside a hyperbaric chamber, being bathed in high pressure oxygen rich air osmotically carrying oxygen into your bloodstream, because there's just no good moment to take a breath. I'd like to see a version of this movie cut with 5 second pauses at 1 minute intervals. That way you could take a deep breath and hold it for every step of the way. Every minute there'd be a black screen with huge text saying "Now breath in deep". It would be released as "Van Helsing: Survival Edition", with the catchphrase "Now You Can Breathe (TM)".
Alright, nuff said. Not suggesting that you avoid this movie. It was actually quite delicious to look at, and I had fun with it (I'm sure someone's going to ream me for admitting that, but WTF). By far the star of the show was Dr. Frankenstein's monster - the only real compelling emotional element in all of it. Van Helsing's sidekick also adds a bit of flavor, of the levity variety. Otherwise, it's just eye candy. But ever so schweet! It's kind of like in that episode of the Simpsons where Bart and Milhouse score a $20 bill and immediately proceed to the Kwik-e-mart to order a squishy from Apu that's made entirely from 100% syrup. Ingestion of said squishy sends Bart and Milhouse on a psychedelic sugar-induced trip and, next morning, Bart discovers he's joined the Boy Scouts. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! I won't bother to go into the plot of this movie, since it's so minimal that even a mere sentence on the plot could be considered a spoiler. You have to see this movie to believe it. The visuals are just so unbelievably out of control. Who needs 'shrooms when you can trip out on this kind of stuff? Sure, the dialog is stooooooopid. Sure, the story is no more than a wee teeny tiny little idea adorned with a katrillion dollars' worth of effects magic. But, sweet eye candy... arrrrrrgrgggrghhghhhhhhhhhhhhhhh......