Kick It, Hugh

Rating: Null/10 (9 May 2004)

Hugh Jackman seems to be going for as many franchises as possible.. which, all things considered, is fine by me. He's fun to watch, and probably the number one reason I even went to see "Van Helsing". Number two reason was, after I read the original "Dracula" I found out that Van Helsing was a great character. The movie Van Helsing, while still a worthy character, needed a lot more development and depth than the screenwriter and director went for. Coherent dialogue would have helped. The writing was pretty bad all through, and the accents were *terrible*, especially Anna's. Richard Roxburgh was entertaining but not particularly scary... actually, nothing in this movie was very scary. David Wenham has definitely crossed wide rivers since his stony, slightly boring Faramir in the LOTR movies, and ended up being my favourite thing about this whole debacle. The special effects only succeeded about half the time, but some of them were quite impressive--- such as the shimmery air around the vampires as they flew, and the light shooting out of Dracula's townhouse after the ball. My one really big problem with this movie, though, was the fact that it didn't *really* star Hugh Jackman. It starred his microphone. I've never seen so much microphone before in any movie, and it took an awful lot away from scenes that had a hard enough time as it was anyway. I don't really want to complain. This was just a summer movie, and summer movies are never great. They could have put a lot more into it, though... oh well. Maybe for the sequel.