Van Helsing

Van Helsing Just plain awful. After a reasonably stylish black and white prologue, the movie degenerates into one of those dysfunctional blockbusters whose makers seem to think that turning up the sound volume to excruciating levels will somehow obscure the pathetic lack of story, dialogue, and character. Perhaps this should come as no surprise; chief architect of the movie is writer and director Stephen Sommers, who also perpetrated the “Mummy” series upon us. Here he replicates his smash-and-grab editing style, all in the service of a spectacle which no sentient human could find engaging. “Van Helsing” is the kind of dispiriting exercise that makes one want to swear off popcorn movies forever. No doubt it cost a fortune, but it is astonishing just how little value we get for the money. The movie is dead in spirit, visually dreary (virtually the entire movie is set at night, in the dark, in gloomy castles, in the rain; after a while you start to wonder if you are going blind), and painfully devoid of humor. The characters all speak like they are from Reseda, except Kate Beckinsale, who speaks in a fake "Transylvania" accent that makes her sound like something out of a Saturday Night Live skit. The fetching Beckinsale, by the way, spends the movie in a corset and stilettos outfit perhaps better suited to clubbing in West LA than combating demons and vampires. Jackman lurches around in a giant cloak that looks like it weighs eighty pounds and displays none of the charm of which he is reportedly capable. Between the two of them they have zero grace and no chemistry, but then, the same can be said for the entire enterprise.