Communicator (communicator) wrote,
Communicator
communicator

Van Helsing: more detail

Some lj friends said they had reconsidered going to see Van Helsing, on the basis of my short condemnation. To be fair, then, I thought I should say a little bit more about what was wrong with it, and you might think it's not so bad.

Pluses. The visual design is pretty good. Jackman is good looking. The first two minutes, in black and white, with Tomothy West as Viktor Frankenstein, are camp and cool. It doesn't take itself too seriously. It's more or less like a computer game on the big screen (if you think that's a plus).

Minuses. Kate Beckinsale can't act and runs like a twit. David Wenham (Faramir) plays a cringing dork. Dracula has no sexual charisma. Apart from a couple of 'made you jumps' I had no emotional engagement. Everything in it is stolen from better films and then trivialised. The plot and dialogue are appalling. The story proceeds by a series of stupid arbitrary coincidences. ('Oh, I've been bitten by a werewolf and I will turn into a werewolf', 'But, according to a prophecy I just remembered, Dracula can only be killed by a werewolf', 'Gosh what a fortuitous coincidence that is', 'Yes and I also just remembered that Dracula is the only person who has anti-werewolf serum', 'Hey, that means I can solve both my problems in one go!')
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