At The Movies

Steaming Pile

Van Helsing
*1/2
  
Sasha Stone
Mirror film critic
  
   Stephen Sommers is by now a hot commodity in Hollywood, having written and directed The Mummy and The Mummy Returns (and the soon to be released Revenge of the Mummy) and last week, Van Helsing, which topped the box office over the weekend and would have topped it again this week were it not for a little movie called Troy.
   Unfortunately, Sommers’ success means that the bar has just been lowered yet again for what makes a successful popcorn movie. In truth, Van Helsing is as forgettable and pointless as they come.
   Taking his cue from every other movie you could ever imagine and robbing his own limited imagination of what little insight and inspiration it might have had, Sommers’ Van Helsing knows exactly what appeals to 12 year-old boys and flings it up on screen like a gorilla flings dung – except in this case, it doesn’t even have the decency to be offensive, which is how a gorilla intends it.
   Van Helsing is James Bond meets Love at First Bite meets Lord of the Rings meets The Powerpuff Girls. It is at once silly and scary, and appears to be modeled after (as so many movies are these days) an amusement park ride rather than a story — not that the hoards of movie-goers who are drawn to this kind of flick give a damn either way.
   Story is precisely what’s missing from Van Helsing, which plays exactly like a bad screenplay would read (if you’ve ever had the privilege of reading one), not that anyone shelling out $10.50 per ticket, $4.50 for a small popcorn, and $3.50 for a (we’re talking small) bottle of water would notice.
   The always delightful Hugh Jackman slums it as the title character, who, in Sommers’ version of the legend, spends eternity hunting down famous changelings, like werewolves, vampires, Mr. Hyde, etc. Van Helsing works for a bunch of religious types at the Vatican who send him out to do God’s work. We catch up with him on the heels of the one, the only Count Dracula (played by the scene-stealing Richard Roxburgh). Dracula has a mission: to breed his kind. But then there’s some other plot involving a Transylvanian family, the sole survivor of which is Anna (yet another example of Kate Beckinsale nearly ruining a film) who, naturally, is Van Helsing’s cup of tea.
   Transylvania, it turns out, is under the curse of Dracula and his three wicked brides, who fly around town looking like the flying monkeys in The Wizard of Oz, baring fangs and picking people up, then dropping them.
   Somehow, in all of this, Frankenstein’s monster (Shuler Hensley) pops up with the key to bringing Dracula’s evil babies (ripped straight out of Jim Cameron’s Aliens) to life. The monster is really one of the more interesting characters, as he’s really a sweet guy underneath it all and always was. But it’s the lead character, Van Helsing, and his romantic interest, Anna, who suck all of the life out of the film.
   Sadly, the movie isn’t nearly as interested in telling a story as it is in showcasing the computer-generated effects. The effects themselves are interesting – perhaps even interesting enough to justify the entire production. But that all depends on how highly you value them.
   To that end, the legacy of Peter Jackson can truly be felt, as we watch a film rely almost solely on the visuals while sacrificing the satisfaction a good story brings. Here, it is similar to the Lord of the Rings trilogy, which simply goes from one breathtaking computer-generated fight scene to another. But unlike the Jackson epics, Van Helsing is peppered with slapstick dialogue that really doesn’t match the tone of the film at all. And many of the effects, ambitious though they are, seem a little too cartoony to be believed.
   There are moments, of course, where the film seems to rise to its potential briefly – a nice bit of acting from Roxburgh as Dracula when he seduces Anna at a masquerade ball. Now, here was the Dracula we all know and love – a man who was as elegant and charming as Cary Grant, a man who can seduce any woman. Not that Mr. Sommers would have any idea whatsoever why women love Dracula. And anyway, his mission is to appeal to boys who model their brain cells on rapid-fire computer games and swiftly moving television shows. How could they be expected to handle the depth of a character like Dracula?
   What Sommers has done, in effect, is condense all of these wonderfully frightening legends into cinematic cliff notes – all the while, tickling that part of the adolescent brain that releases the endorphins that young boys seem to love so much. If you stop and think too much about the actual plot of the film you begin to feel that same nausea you get after reading a joke off a Bazooka gum wrapper: you can’t believe you actually read it and thought about it for even half a second.
   Van Helsing may make some people happy, momentarily. Yes, it’s just a movie. It’s supposed to be fun. Maybe for you it will be fun. Me, I wanted the two hours I spent watching it back.