Van Pointless

Rating: 5/10 (24 May 2004)

Van Helsing is all smoke and mirrors. It uses tremendous amounts of "shock & awe" to hide the fact that it doesn't have a compelling story or interesting characters. The whole experience was similar to watching someone play a video game for roughly 2 hours. I also felt that this particular movie was suffering from an identity crisis: it could never decide what kind of movie it wanted to be. Is it a comedy? Is it horror? Is it drama? It was, quite simply, trying to do too much with too little story to back it up.
This movie was _almost_ bad enough to make it into a good movie (e.g. Troll II, Deathstalker III, etc), but, unfortunately, it also failed in that regard.
* spoiler *
What's the deal with Anna's (Beckinsale) family appearing in the clouds at the end of the movie? That little segment was, arguably, the cheesiest thing I've seen in a movie in a looong time.
I rated it a 5/10.