Van Helsing

Just horrendous. Not one redeeming quality. Not even a boob. Heck, I would've settled for a man-boob. See how this movie has damaged my already fragile psyche?

I don't even know where to begin. Van Helsing was just crap in every sense of the word. It wasn't entertaining at all; it actually had TOO MUCH friggin' action; the acting and dialogue were horrible; the SFX were shit; the attempts at humor were pitiful...I could go on and on, and since it's my webpage, I will.

Allow me to make it clear that I wasn't expecting this movie to be any good - but it really went out of its way to meet my mediocre expectations. I figured it would be cheesy, light fare, a la The Italian Job (the new one - never saw the original). You know, the kind of movie that you know is dumb, but you just sit back and have a few laughs. Uh-uh. Van Helsing doesn't even give you that much. In fact, I think it actually takes more from you than it gives. I'm pretty sure if you did an MRI of my brain before and after watching this, you'd find a 4-5% reduction in brain mass. And I need every damn brain cell just to remember to put on socks before shoes.

I'll try to prod the old cerebellum into action to tell you about the few scenes of the movie that I saw when I wasn't stabbing my leg with a potato peeler. Um, so there's a prologue where Dracula makes Dr. Frankenstein instill life into the monster, and then Dracula kills the good doctor. The monster breaks free and goes to the windmill, which the silly superstitious townsfolk burn down.

Flash forward like a hundred years or something, and everything's now in color. Gabriel Van Helsing (Abraham's brother, so as to avoid any messy legal battles with the Stoker estate - see the history of 1922's Nosferatu for more on what happens when you mess with the Widow Stoker) works for the Vatican, killing bad guys like Mr. Hyde and Aaron Spelling.

Gabby gets sent to Transylvania to help the last two descendants of a royal line sworn to destroy Dracula. He arrives to great skepticism and fear, much like the people renting this movie have to face when bringing it to the video store counter. Dracula's bat-wife-things come in and start eating townspeople, providing VH with the PERFECT opportunity to win the hearts and minds of the silly simple peasants. He does so with a stupid rapid-fire crossbow thing and the help of the boringly clad Anna, who happens to be one of the above-mentioned descendants. Oh yeah, a werewolf killed her brother.

So after a loooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooong and boring interlude complete with VH giving her a firm talking-to about the dangers of fighting Dracula, they set off to kill the movie-I mean Dracula.

Somewhere along the way they meet Frankenstein's monster, who's been hiding in the ruins of the windmill, and it turns out Frankie is just misunderstood; he actually loves strawberry-flavored breakfast cereal. Interestingly, this monster is more faithful to Mary Shelley's creation than any movie Frankenstein I can recall. Unfortunately, the entire rest of the movie is total shit.

Frank agrees to accompany these two morons-I mean adventurers-and they go on their merry way. One of Dracula's wives kidnaps Anna, and the Prince of Dorkness offers a trade - Anna for the monster. Oh yeah, he wants the monster because it (he?) is the only being big enough to channel lightning through Dr. Frankenstein's equipment, which would bring Dracula's offspring to life, unleashing terror, death and horrible sequels upon the world.

Van Smellsing agrees to the trade, but only in a public place - the city's grand ball. Everyone and their undead mother is there, and Van Helsing tries to pull the old trick play on Dracula, but it backfires and the Lord of the Undead makes off with Frank N. Stein.

So now Van Fucko, Anna, and Van Helsing's idiot sidekick (oh yeah, I forgot to mention him - the most annoying sidekick since Jar Jar Binks) get to storm the castle to rescue everyone. Yay.

But no one knows where Dracula's castle is!!! The mystery deepens...as does the stupidity...

...but wait!! Van Shithead takes the ridiculously foreshadowed piece of parchment his father left him and places it in the missing corner of a painting in Anna's ancestral castle, revealing a frozen ice portal to Dracula's dimension!! A-ha!! Shoot me now!!

It just gets more and more retarded from here, with Van Asswad slowly turning into a werewolf and the others trying to find the werewolf antidote that Dracula has in his castle because the only thing that can kill Dracula is a werewolf. We learned this wonderful tidbit earlier, when the annoying sidekick found a painting in Anna's castle depicting a werewolf killing a vampire. Just hit me in the fucking head with the plot points, please.

So their ingenious plan is to have Van Hemorrhoid turn into a vampire and kill Dracula, and then to give him the antidote before the 12th stroke of midnight. Of course instead of creating suspense, this "deadline" removes the suspense entirely, since we know they'll give him the antidote just in the nick of time.

On top of that, he turns into a werewolf at the first stroke of midnight, which means he would have about twelve seconds to kill Dracula and then get the injection, right? Wrong. The first knell tolls and he turns into a werewolf. And then you never hear another noise from the clock tower. Um...wha? So what's the rush?

Anyway, after a loooooooooooong, booooooooooooooring fight, Van Wolfie kills Dracula, gets the injection, and accidentally kills Anna. Sniff sniff. Then everyone goes home, and I want two hours of my life back.

Oh Hugh Jackman, how I long for the early Wolverine days of your career. Wait, that was like last year. Oh Hugh, how you've fallen. Not since David Duchovny left The X-Files has a sci-fi star-type guy plummeted so quickly into stupid shit movies.

More info from IMDB: Van Helsing