Delightfully cheesy good fun!

Rating: 2/10 (6 February 2005)

This movie is a hilarious cheese-fest. Whether the director intended it to be this camp is hard to tell, although I personally believe that he deliberately made it tongue in cheek. Not only are there tributes to the old Dracula and Frankenstein movies of the 30's and 40's, there are also scenes practically lifted from other spoof films such as Dracula Dead and Loving It.
Hugh Jackman is Van Helsing-a man with no past and no memories, and one of the worst and most incomprehensible German accents it has ever been my pleasure to laugh at. Plus, his hat is extremely stupid, as well. He works for a secret organization run from the Vatican, which dedicates itself to fighting and destroying evil creatures(Micheal Eisner?)
After the silly black and white opening sequence, you see Van Helsing in 'London', fighting one of the worst CGI monsters I've ever seen. It's supposed to be Mr.Hyde, I guess. This is the start of many dreadful fight scenes full of bad CGI and lots and lots of stupid wire work.
The Vatican's next assignment for Van Helsing(did the slide show self destruct after thirty seconds, I wonder?)is to track down and destroy Count Dracula, with the help of the last members of Dracula's human blood line. Along for the ride is a whiny friar who makes weapons and bombs in a basement. The last family members are a guy who gets bitten and turns into a terrible CGI werewolf who looks like he has porcupine quills instead of fur, and Kate Beckinsale in a long curly wig, high heels, and a corset so tight looking that I wondered how she could breathe, let alone do action sequences. As an added bonus, she sports an accent even worse than Jackman's or Dracula's.
The flying 'brides of Dracula' sequences have about the same level of complexity as the flying demon girl in Army of Darkness. There are many bouts of silly dialogue interspersed with shots of Van Helsing firing a crossbow that seemingly has infinite ammunition.One of the brides is killed, and apparently she was made of green silly putty. All of the f/x on the vamps are just as bad.
Dracula looks like he was gearing up to re-do the cover on the Beatle's Sargeant Pepper's Lonely Heart's Club Band album cover. His secret yearning is to be a Daddy, but the only way he can spawn his many ridiculous looking gargoylish devil children is to find a way to give them life, since he and his 'wives' are dead.He uses Kate Beckinsale's brother, who has become the aforementioned werewolf, to try to give his children life. It doesn't work, much to his chagrin. He wanted Dr. Frankenstein's monster because the good doctor had found a way to overcome death by sewing up his multiple body parts and zapping them with random bolts of electricity. With the loss of the monster, it looks as though his chances of becoming 'Undead Father of the Year' are rapidly fading.
Luckily for him, the monster is not dead. Van Helsing and Anna stumble over it after they fall into a hole out of sheer carelessness. This is after they saw Dracula try to bring to life his first batch of cutesy, silly looking children. Unfortunately, this batch wasn't cooked thoroughly so they popped like popcorn. Dracula apparently knows Van Helsing, calling him Gabriel and hinting that he knows far more about his past than amnesia boy does himself. I have to ask-why does Hugh Jackman end up playing so many characters who have suffered a mysterious memory loss?
Anyway, Van Helsing tries to smuggle the monster out of Transylvania via coach, but like all coach service this one is pretty crappy. There's a scene where the horses pulling the coach leap a gorge where the bridge is out as though they're Santa's flying reindeer rather than regular horses. Anna's werewolf brother, now thoroughly controlled by Dracula, interferes and is killed by Van Helsing. He bites Van Helsing before he dies, perhaps as a going away present. Then the single bride still left flying makes off with Anna. So the whole plan is botched, since Van Helsing offers to trade the monster to Dracula to get Anna back.
Enter a Halloween bash being thrown by Cirque Du Soleil. Here Dracula waits to make the exchange, although really he's planning to have his cake and eat it to. He wants to make Anna a bride to replace his lost wives, and get the monster as well. Van Helsing, wearing a dumb Zorro mask, rescues Anna but loses the monster to Dracula. So now he has to find Dracula's palace, kill Dracula, get a cure for his lycanthropy, and rescue the monster. All before he turns into a raving blood thirsty werewolf for the rest of his life. Not too much to ask, huh?
Suffice it to say that he manages all of these tasks. Anna gets killed while giving him the antidote to werewolfism, and there's another ridiculously stupid CGI sequence that's like It's A Wonderful Life as filtered through the Lifetime channel. In other words, pure sentimental schmaltz. Then you see Van Helsing and the friar riding off into the sunset. A CGI sunset, that is. And you see the freed Frankenstein monster sailing a raft to Fiji, apparently under the mistaken belief that he's Thor Heyerdahl. Or maybe Huck Finn, who knows?
I laughed harder at this film than I have at some which are labeled as comedies. It's too bad that Mystery Science Theater 3000 went out of business, they'd have loved a film like Van Helsing.