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Poster (c) Universal Studios
Van Helsing (Hugh Jackman) is someone who fights evil for the current hot topic in films-a secret order of Catholic priests. He is sent to Transylvania to defeat Dracula (Richard Roxburgh), as that will save the whole Valerious family from Hell (long story). Once he gets there, he battles the brides of Dracula with the last remaining Valerious, Anna (Kate Beckinsale). Along with his nerdish sidekick Carl (David Wenham), they go to battle evil, along with all of Universal's other monsters, Frankenstein and The Wolf Man.
There are two schools of thought for this movie. One is that it's an entertaining movie with intentionally bad CGI, a movie you should just sit back and enjoy. The other is that as much as you wanted to enjoy the movie, you couldn't because of the story. I am in the second. I enjoyed writer/director Stephen Sommers' Mummy movies, as I was able to suspend my belief, something I was not able to do for Van Helsing. The character of Van Helsing was, I believe, in the Dracula series, yet he was taken completely out of context as this monster-hunter. At least the movie makes sure that we know who the Universal characters are.
To prove my point, here are some examples of how little this movie cares about entertaining our brains. A subtitle claims that Vatican City is in Rome. Although technically it is, the Vatican is a country, not "part" of Rome. Latin writings used improper grammatical syntax. Vampires, which everyone knows can only come out at night, attack in the broad daylight. Full moons come a dime a dozen. Werewolf transformations, which supposedly cause the transformer the first time, flows seamlessly when someone becomes a werewolf. Vampires can travel quicker than Transylvanian horses, "the fastest thing on Earth". Whenever anything touches the ground, it blows up. Werewolf serum can only be given within the twelve strokes of midnight when the werewolf first transforms, and, by God, according to this movie, those are the longest twelve strokes ever. Raging monsters, such as Mr. Hyde, can control their actions. And no one, not even the physically fit Van Helsing, can swim down about one foot. And people say "leave your brains at the door" for this one. Even if you do you'll still find faults.
As for the action sequences, sure, they beat twiddling your thumbs, but that by no means means that they were exciting. It's like the culminating fight in The Two Towers: after a while, seeing random computer-generated freaks fighting each other becomes boring. Sometimes it flaunts itself, saying "look what we can do!", but much better (and emotionally involving) transformations took place in The Hulk. And sometimes the movie seemed bored with itself, so it added stupid smart-aleck sayings by Van Helsing-almost none of which were funny. Jackman looked out of place in this role-no wonder he originally refused it. He doesn't know what to do with the character, but it's not his fault. It's the script's fault, and I suppose that Van Helsing is the best you can do with a crappy script like this one.
Rated PG-13 for nonstop creature action violence and frightening images, and for sensuality.
Review Date: May 18, 2004