Van Helsing
Directed by Stephen Sommers.
The Mummy was an excellent, if derivative, adventure movie that owed more to the Sinbad movies and Indiana Jones than it did the original 1932 classic. The sequel, The Mummy Returns, was contrived and overloaded with CGI, but still managed to be an entertaining action yarn. Unfortunately, writer/director Stephen Sommers’ latest picture continues this downward trend, filled with bland characters, pointless action and silly dialogue.
Like a greatest-hits compilation of the Universal monster movies, we’ve got Dracula and his three wives, Frankenstein and his monster, multiple Wolfmen and, for some strange reason, Mr. Hyde. Just about all we’re missing is the Creature from the Black Lagoon and a cameo by the Invisible Man. Dracula (Richard Roxburgh), you see, wants to animate his children by jolting them with electricity — after all, the undead don’t naturally give birth to live children do they? Enter Van Helsing (Hugh Jackman), his sidekick (David Wenham) and Anna Valerious (Kate Beckinsale), who must stop him at all costs.
There’s a few more plot strands that don’t amount to much, since Sommers is clearly more interested in the action and the CGI, which might be okay, except the action scenes are unremarkable in themselves, except for a quite exciting stagecoach battle that looks like it has wandered into Sleepy Hollow.
But unfortunately we care nothing for the characters. I don’t expect something too deep from Sommers, but at least in The Mummy we there was some emotional investment; here they’re stick figures in a computer game. The Australian actors try to have fun with the slight material, but even most of the jokes fall flat. Beckinsale, too, doesn’t have much more to do than look pretty and speak in a phoney-Romanian accent.
The film was photographed by Allen Daviau, who has shot many Spielberg films (including E.T.), and there are some great images — the opening black and white homage to James Whale’s Frankenstein is a nice touch — and the production design is impressive. But otherwise this is a noisy and pointless exercise in CGI trickery and a real missed opportunity. Go out and hire the original Frankenstein instead.
*1/2 (out of four)
Joshua Blackman
