Van Horrible

Rating: 1/10 (23 January 2009)

Yikes! What a bombastic, over-the-top, third rate CGI fantasy ride.
I'm not sure what Jackman and Beckinsale thought they signed up for, but when they sat back and watched the film, after all the "special defects" were worked in during post-production, I'm sure they whimpered and felt as cheated as future audiences did.
Besides a ho-hum storyline, the tale was plagued by clichés (including a cookie cutter sidekick that was intelligent, yet meek as well as goofy), and extraordinarily weak matte paintings and CGI. Heck, some of the CGI almost mirrored the claymation of old in its unrealistic stiffness.
Most scenes, however, were drawn out to the point where they lost any hold on the viewer. Even worse, many of the human characters, no matter how much pain and suffering they endured at the hands of vampires, werewolves and such, brushed themselves off with barely a scratch and moved on. Please.
Weak, trite, boring and not worth watching except for maybe a laugh.