Van Helsing Movie Review

If you gave writer/director Stephen Sommers your antique car for the afternoon, just for a wash say, you'd see him bring it into your driveway at night with a hole cut in the hood for a blower and racing stripes down the side, after a few turns around the Demolition Derby track.

That's what he has done in Van Helsing and there's nothing, essentially, wrong with that. Universal's classic monsters, Dracula, Frankenstein's Monster, and the Wolf Man, have never been immune from crass exploitation and reinterpretation. It is actually part of the reason they've been around so long.

But in Van Helsing though the monsters' fangs have become more pronounced Sommers has taken the teeth out of all of them. Frankenstein's Monster turns into Godzooky; he's nice, he wants to help. Dracula has been turned into a hen-pecked fop. The Wolf Man has become a whirling dervish, more Tasmanian Devil than a creature of dread and fear.

That's to be expected because Sommers took the lumbering, creepy presence of the Mummy and turned him into a near omnipotent being in The Mummy and The Mummy Returns. Both those films were amped-up, ludicrous, and very profitable. So was the equally silly Scorpion King, which Sommers produced. And, once one settles into the notion that Sommers films are guilty pleasures they're usually easier to take. Usually.

But Sommers's Moonraker approach never lets up in Van Helsing and this film, right from the beginning, lacks any measure of consequence. Our hero, Van Helsing, meets Mr. Hyde (Dr. Jekyll's other half) early on and lops off his left arm. Does Hyde seem infuriated, or even in a lot of pain? No, the behemoth is cracking wise.

Gabriel Van Helsing (they dispensed with the stuffy "Abraham" and we're to presume he hasn't achieved his doctorate yet) hunts down evil and wicked creatures for his bosses back in Rome. They don't mention the Vatican, or the Catholic Church, but everyone at home base looks like a cardinal, a monk, or a friar so we're left to presume. His latest mission is to defend the beleaguered Valerious clan, a family sworn to defeat the vicious Count Dracula (Richard Roxburgh) or all past generations will be condemned to hell. The last one left in the illustrious line is Anna Valerious (Kate Beckinsale), who has just lost her brother in a battle with a werewolf. Van Helsing totes with him Friar Carl (David Wenham, last seen as Faramir in the Lord of the Rings films) to save the girl. They arrive in Translyvania and are immediately attacked by Dracula's three vampire brides, dispensing one pretty quickly. Van Helsing gets some amount of recognition for this as it's the first vampire that anyone has been able to kill in a hundred years. This doesn't say much for what the last three generations of the Valerious family have been up to (my bet is developing and perfecting a hair conditioner), but it puts him in good stead with Anna regardless.

Count Dracula is up to some no-good scheme that requires Frankenstein's monster, a creature that disappeared with his creator in a burning windmill. Dracula also is somehow controlling the Wolf Man, whom he uses like a feral Ariel, flitting about to do reconnaissance, or fetching. Though he doesn't seem to need to hide out (the villagers certainly pose no threat they pretty much run and scatter), Dracula secrets himself in a lair on his off hours that no one has been able to find.

Van Helsing doesn't use his wits, or his superior knowledge of folklore to figure any of this out; it's all rather laid at his feet. That's one of the other major mistakes in this reimagining. They've taken a very human, very wise character, the one individual keen enough to immediately grasp the supernatural threat, and turned him into a supernatural threat himself. It's rather like giving Sherlock Holmes super-speed but making him a dolt.

Hugh Jackman, as the title character, doesn't embarrass himself (quite a feat in this film) but there is very little for him, as an actor, to do. He's not allowed to act surprised, or scared, or even perturbed. The action is done largely by CGI Hugh. But even CGI Hugh delivers a better performance than Kate Beckinsale. Kate. Kate. Kate. Poor Kate is forced to gin up tears at several intervals which come across as just one more thing that Sommers thinks is funny (he doesn't, but it comes across that way).

And that is Sommer's biggest mistake. He's made everything so overblown that he can't seem to bring the film back down (it almost seems he's edited out any attempt to actually modulate it). The puffery carries it over to what should be the quieter, or at least more emotional, scenes. Scenes that should have some gravitas, Van Helsing gets his instructions from Rome, Van Helsing and his squire arrive in Transylvania, are peppered with so many asides and rejoinders that we're never invited to partake in the fantasy as anything more than an extended cartoon. The vampire brides are so affected, emoting with such histrionics, that Wagner should be bellowing out of their mouths. Jumping on the same side of the bombastic scale is Richard Roxburgh's Dracula. He's not marching around in Frank-N-Furter's boots but he should be (and please know that I think this actor both underappreciated and underutilized). If it wasn't so damn expensive you'd think it was all one huge practical joke by Sommers on Universal and the audience ("Ha! I made a camp version of the end of Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger and nobody called me on it!"). The audience, by the way, gets tired of all the practical jokes. Hooting and jeering abounded in the screening I attended. The ending, a cheesy, howler (literally!) of a bad one, lands this ever spiraling film down on the bottom of the pile as one of the worst of the year. Sommers ends up totalling the prized jalopy, but he'll probably walk away again without a scratch.