“ Van Hell-Sing”
Van Helsing is one of the most disappointing movies I've ever seen. I honestly expected to be at least entertained, but this movie seemed to confuse action-adventure with comedy. Instead of being fast-paced, it offered a lot of loose one liners and pretentious comments that were supposed to be funny; at least I think they were.
The problem for Van Helsing was not the acting or even the basic storyline. More was expected from a Stephen Sommers film, especially after the success of The Mummy films and even The Scorpion King. The performances done by both Hugh Jackman and Kate Beckinsale were mediocre, but the fault came from the director, not the actors. This particular genre expects more from a film that represents both Dracula and Van Helsing. The fact that the exaggerated computer-generated graphics from League of Extraordinary Gentlemen is significantly better than this film, doesn't say much for Van Helsing.
Hugh Jackman is a very good actor, known for being one of the nicest guys in Hollywood, and is well-known for his role as the Wolverine in X-Men and X2. He seems keen on making action-adventures like X-Men, and romantic comedies like Kate & Leopold. But even with these movies under his belt, he is going to have to work harder resisting films like Van Helsing that will only disappoint his fans.
Kate Beckinsale looks fantastic, but just because she is British doesn't mean that she can pull off an accent from Transylvania, Romania. Honestly, what is up with Americans believing that if an actor has a different accent from what is commonly known as American-English then they could play any role from all parts of the world? Have we really sheltered ourselves from ever knowing anything outside of America? Hopefully that won't be the case, but just to make sure that we are not failing geography class, pull out a geography book and learn the different countries that make up the rest of the world.
Probably the best part of this film was the eye-line match between the actors combating the computer-generated monsters. In fact, I must say that the computer-generated graphics were excellent…for the 1980's. We are in the year 2004 and it seems that the entertainment businesses are just throwing out bad-quality films just to make easy money. Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992) was by far one of the best Dracula films made, and it did not use exaggerated computer graphics to try and convince us vampires really can fly.
High-tech gadgets seem to be another motif the film tried to use. Actually, isn't this film set in the 1880s? They had amazing technological equipments for that ...
