Van Helsing (2004)
"Wait just a minute! I agreed to fight vampires, Dracula, Frankenstein, the Wolfman, & the Mummy, but you never said anything about my Mother In Law!"
Starring: |
Hugh Jackman
|
Released By: |
Universal Pictures |
Released In: |
2004 |
Rated: |
PG-13 |
Reviewed By: |
Adam Mast |
Grade: |
C+ |
Van Helsing is absolutely, positively, without question-THE FUNNIEST DAMN MOVIE OF THE YEAR! Seriously folks, nothing comes close. I attended a midnight screening of the new Stephen Sommers epic and I laughed my ass off throughout most of it. Whether or not Sommers intended the movie to be this funny remains a mystery. If all the seemingly unintentional hilarity on display in this picture was Sommers' intent, then The Mummy director is a genius in my book. Personally though, I think Sommers did intend much of this stuff to be taken seriously, and this makes this convoluted mess of a movie all the more entertaining.
For those of you looking for an intelligent and thoughtful take on the story of Van Helsing, stay home. This is not Anthony Hopkins' Van Helsing. This is an overblown homage to the movies that inspired Sommers growing up. And at a glance, the film almost appears to be based on a graphic novel (such was the case with The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen), but it isn't. It all came from within Sommers' fevered noggin.
Hugh Jackman plays Van Helsing, a sort of superhero (complete with high tech, Blade style weaponry) who spends his days dispatching werewolves and vampires back to where they came from, and through the duration of this picture, he even has run ins with Mr. Hyde and Frankenstein's monster. While out performing his duty, he comes face to face with the vampire of all vampires, Dracula. Naturally, the legendary parasite has an evil agenda and it's up to Van Helsing to thwart his evil sinister designs.
This movie is so outrageously silly, I don't even know where to begin. I will say that you will see where the budget went (the movie reportedly cost in the neighborhood of 200 million dollars). To call this an effects-heavy picture would be a grotesque understatement. That's really all it is.
The performances are beyond disposable, granted no actor could have transformed this material into anything besides laughter. On the other hand, I don't think Sommers really gives a rat's ass about such things. Hugh Jackman just sort of walks around with a face of stone and appears to be having a fun time kicking monster butt. And in a weird little twist, he is afforded an opportunity to bring a little Wolverine to his role. Kate Beckinsale (who appeared in the similarly themed Underworld last year) is just dreadful. Sure, she looks beautiful, but the Transylvanian accent is positively awful (it should be noted that none of the cast fare well in the accent department) and she just seems to be hanging around to look good. But the biggest riot of them all is Richard Roxburgh's take on Dracula. He plays him as a smarmy, flamboyant fiend with a fondness for dancing. Oh man, every time this plasma-plundering ponce came on screen, I thought I was going to piss myself.
The look of the picture is impressive. The castles and various landscapes that surround Sommers' movie world are extremely sumptuous. The same can't be said for the cheesy looking wardrobe - many of these costumes appeared to be on loan from Ella Enchanted.
The screenplay (if one actually exists) is all over the place. This movie is just schizophrenic and completely disjointed. And the melodramatic and over-the-top dialogue make it nearly impossible to take anything that any of these characters utter seriously.
Oh yes, as previously mentioned, there are plenty of monsters to be found in Van Helsing. We get CGI werewolves (which have nothing on the superior creations in The Howling and American Werewolf in London), winged and sexy vampire women who giggle and float into the sky (which instantly brought to mind Ash's dancing, decapitated corpse of a girlfriend in Evil Dead 2). There are tiny bat creatures that resemble Gremlins, cloaked servant dwarves which appear inspired by jawas and those creepy little henchmen from the Phantasm series. And, last but not least, Frankenstein's misunderstood monster (who looks suspiciously like Frankenberry of Frankenberry cereal fame). None of them are particularly scary, but they're still fun to watch.
Stephen Sommers doesn't miss a chance to wink at the films he loves. One of the more obvious sequences involves Van Helsing's tour of a weapons and gadgets arsenal, a direct homage to James Bond (made all the stranger given that Hugh Jackman's name has been kicked around as a possible Bond replacement). I also thought the opening black and white sequence was a nice touch. There are numerous other tips of the hat as well. From the old school Universal monster movies to more recent fright pictures like the Alien films, Sommers borrows from the best, but this movie is just too damn nutty. It's like an overcrowded sanitarium, with a security problem. And while, I kind of admire his energy, there's no getting around that this really is a rather bad film.
However, there is "good bad" and then there's "bad bad." Van Helsing is more "good bad." This is to say that it was so lame that I actually found it somewhat amusing. Clearly, the movie is way too long (it clocks in at around 2 hours and fifteen minutes), but for the most part, I had a great time laughing and yelling lines back at the screen in a Rocky Horror kind of fashion (on a side note, there's a character in this picture that looks a lot like Rocky Horror's Riff Raff).
I'd still like to see a serious take on Van Helsing. For a while there, I heard that Francis Ford Coppola and Anthony Hopkins were discussing it. For whatever reason, they decided not to do it - opening the door for Sommers scattershot, balls to the wall vision. You'll have to see this one to believe it. Thus far, I think my favorite review of the picture was one I read over at aint-it-cool-news.com. Some guy called it a 200 million dollar Troma film. Like the movie itself, that's just hilarious.
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