 Well
this is a tough but short one to write. Let's give you the tissue paper
thin plot first: Dracula needs to have Frankenstein's Monster's body
so that he can shove lightning through it and zap his pod-grown children
(they look like testicles!) and create an army. He has captured The
Wolf Man - well, a werewolf - and is using him to taunt Gabriel Van
Helsing who is hunting him down. Throw in a gypsy princess who is trying
to save her brother (the werewolf) and kill Dracula as well, and there
you have the plot for the latest CGI-infested tripe doled out by Hollywood
for this summer.
I really wanted to like this film. I love the old Universal horror
movies; I grew up with them on late night TV
and The Wolf Man was always
a personal favourite. It's a pity that writer
and director Stephen
Sommers - who did an excellent job with The Mummy films
- was allowed to sink his teeth into the other
horror icons that had not been seen on screen
together since Abbot And Costello Meet Frankenstein years
ago. Well, in The
Monster Squad they were together, but no one
has seen or remembers
that apart from me . . . In short, Van Helsing really
sucks!
The opening sequence that sets the story up has Dracula
working with Dr Frankenstein for mutual benefit, but when the Monster awakes
he finds
that Drac has killed his master, so he grabs
the dead doctor and runs away, pursued of course
by angry villagers, led by one who looks
exactly like Riff Raff from The Rocky Horror
Picture Show! This is shot by Sommers in black
and
white,
and tries but fails to pay homage to the original
films, coming across more like Tim Burton's Ed
Wood than anything truly scary.
Herein is where the problem lies
- this film tries to be too many things at once.
It cannot decide if it's campy horror, scary horror, action
adventure, stupid comedy (the jokes are awful)
or a kids' film, and as it's 12a rated you can
add censor-dodging to the schizophrenic feel.
The accents are crap - Kate Beckinsale as the
Romanian gypsy princess looks like she wants to escape the movie, and Hugh
Jackman as Van Helsing gets hardly any lines
of dialogue, but at least looks the part (well apart from his girly long
hair). Special mention should go to Richard
Roxbrough as Dracula. He is so shit in this
film that I wanted to leap onto the screen and stake
him myself. His accent is pathetic, he comes
across like he is Wayne Hussey from goth band
The Mission (only not as good) and he is so camp
you would think that Kenneth Williams had
possessed him. Based on this effort, I hope he
never works in film again. The only actor who
manages to do well in Van Helsing is Shuler Hensley as
Frankenstein's Monster. His performance gives the creature real pathos and
believability.
Some of the set pieces are great to watch, but at 2 hours 5 minutes
this is 30 minutes too long. Action scene after action scene is so boring
to watch, and Hollywood has still not learnt that werewolves should
be done with real animatronics with real hair. CGI ones look crap, as
do CGI giant Dracula half-bats. Even Coppola knew this when he
made his version of the vamp.
So, see Van Helsing if you do not have
to pay, every other film in
the cinema is sold out and you have nothing better
to do. At all. Period.
:: Mark
Cappuccio |
