Van Helsing

[junkie christ]

i watched this attempt tonight. in a sentence, saying Van Helsing did these characters justice is like saying that Dagget was a good replacement for Mulder on the X-Files.
heres the skimmy:
this movie had some ungodly potential. the plot is a fucking cool concept. the FX crew is top notch. the casting was seemingly great.
and it did somethings well... like the first hour or so.BUT BUT BUT....
ok they give him the stereotype witty sidekick. i can deal with that.
other than that heres some initial problems:
a) the VanHelsing -- Dracula connection..... IF YOU EVEN FIGURE OUT WHAT THEY ARE TALKING ABOUT... (tip: study your Catholic Demonology/Angel names) is the all time WORST plottwist attempt i have seen in my entire life. Even if the rest of the movie had no flaws, that would have FUCKED the movie for me.
b) Dracula's weakness was just far beyond STUPID, predictable, made no sense, and was laugh out loud horrible.
c) NO ONE IN THIS MOVIE DISPLAYED A SPEC OF ACTING TALENT BUT THE GUY THAT DID FRAKENSTEIN. seriously id give that guy a supporting actor nomination just to spite every other thing in this movie.
d) hugh jackman must have in his contract I WILL NOT BE IN A MOVIE WITH OUT SHARP THINGS THAT COME OUT OF MY HANDS
e) Kate Beckensale (i know i misspelled it, nazi-spellers get off me) will not be in a movie without werewolves, vampires, and her in a corest. that is my FAVORITE thing about this movie.

okok enough rambling heres the review
VanHelsing is an ungodly liberal attempt to revitalize the classic dracula story by taking his character and mixing him with.... well for lack of better terms... wolverine and indiana jones. He works for an organization that in the movie bio says is a mix of all the major religious leaders.... yet all they mention is the Catholics. Im sure the editors are Catholic and took these mentions out but they should have edited the bio, storyline, and extras accordingly. Hugh Jackman did a good job with a anexoric character, but they gave him loads of plot potential and never explored it for balls. Kate did a job that beat her role in Underworld (which as acting goes wouldnt have taken much but i love that movie anyway) but her accent is to acting what the backstreet boys are to music. The sidekick is a very interesting character who provides 95% of the humor in the movie, but damn his lines of humor worked. ill give him that.
now the villians.....
the werewolf just screamed alot. i can deal with that.
Frakenstein did a fucking convincing job. He pulled off some ungodly facial expressions with CG layered around him. i REALLY dug the way frankenstein was done and his role in all this shit is a fucking COOL concept. its the one thing about this movie that is above all the neatest fucking concept in it.
The vampire nmyph chicks do a neat job of tasteful bad acting but their wardrobe was more laughable than a first attempt rein-faire costume.
WHICH BRINGS ME TO DRACULA.
who ever cast this man DESERVES TO BE MURDERED.
Ever see the buffy the vampire slayer movie? there was a vamp guy who died for like 15 mins of the movie. Laughably the worst vampire in history. ID TAKE HIM OVER THIS ASS CLOWN. EDDIE MURPHY IN A VAMPIRE IN BROOKLYN DESERVES MORE CREDIT THAN THAT SHIT HEEL. Everything about his acting performance shouts REFUND REFUND.

The special effects in this movie are more abundant than beer at a frat party. but alot of the times...the CG hulk versus using a real hulk debate is renewed. alot of this shit is just way too much. and how many times to vampires need to pick up humans? the mix of wire tricks and CG looks so goddamn convincing its sick but i swear they added alot to be filler. its gets annoying. and if VanHelsing is so bad ass, why is his aim so fucking terrible? he shoots like 100000000 times and never hits these vamps. jeezus. let stevie wonder hold the guns nexttime, your chances are better.
alot of the CG in this movie mixes HORRIBLY in the background and the images have white lines around the green screened backgrouds. which makes me ask, why did you shoot this movie on location for its surrounds to take pictures of it and green screen it over the background that was there anyway? its clipping is horrible. they went special effects slap happy and its only redeemed by the amazing wire tricks that pair with them. i will admit, theres a shit load of eyecandy in this movie. my god some of those effects, if you think about the complexity, are some serious shit. alot of the flying bodies are actually flying on wires and sped up to look cool, but still the amount of CG in this movie requries methadone NOW. as previously mentioned, the monsters often have lines of shade around them that totally kill the effect. the special effects crews for backgrounds and the monsters... i bet they never spoke once about things like shading and light levels. if you do graphic art, this movie has TONS of OHMYGOTH I NEED TO DO THAT outweighted by its NEVERDOTHISAGAIN

The plot in this movie starts MEGA potential.... but never actually sees any measure at all. And if drac is really this badass, killing our hero and his buddies would have been far beyond simple. the reasons people survive this movie are horribly laughable. there is a bar even in fantasy movies that once passed just looks over the top to the point of stupidity. this is an example. if you dont get tired of seeing people catch objects in mid air swinging from wries that were never defined in the plot but magicly save the day... you deserve this movie and quick gun shot wound to the skull.

in conclusion this movie has DEFINITE strong points that could have created a GREAT movie, but its weak points are SO FUCKING HUGE that you dont know if you liked it or not. Dr.Hyde's cameo is an awesome way to start the flick... but attempts to overhype so many aspects of this movie that woulda been fine on its own...... argh. they tried to force an epic and made a subpar movie. if it sounds like im angry, i am. this movie had SOOOOOOOO much more potential than it used. in the end, this movies writing was headed by the guy who wrote the mummy and the mummy returns and directed them. if youve seen these movies, you know that they raped the story of the mummy and made one ok movie and one abysmal terd. But he still raped the story of the mummy.
Now hes done it to dracula, frankensteins monster, the wolfman, and the questionable character of VanHelsing.
I was so excited to see an indiana jones style movie with classic movie horror and building up a character i always felt was underdeveloped.
what happened was a movie that needed about three more edits with no egos to the special effects department and some SERIOUS story corrections. ESP VanHelsings true identity... something i had to explain to many people outside what was meant... and me and my buddy who knew decided that the "plot-twist" of his identity was so bad we deserved to murder the man who robbed us of two and half hours of our lives because we actually heard those words muttered.plus i have a problem with any final battle being entirely done on a computer.at least underwold used a mix of CG and costumes, they should have thought about that during the final battle.but its does have some UNGODLY special effects and some awesome action scenes, plus the first half of this movie was pretty on point. it just gets..... silly.
i give this movie a C, 3 stars out of 5, on the note that whats good is great and whats bad is horrid. you will either love or hate this flick.. me? im soooooooo still trying to figure out if i kinda liked it or really hate it. but ill buy it on DVD just to see kate prove that even fully dressed in nonrevealing clothing... give her a corset and a sword and shes one of the SEXIEST women on earth. :drool:

[Coor]

EDDIE MURPHY IN A VAMPIRE IN BROOKLYN DESERVES MORE CREDIT THAN THAT SHIT HEEL

Damn that's bad.

[Nemesis]

EDDIE MURPHY IN A VAMPIRE IN BROOKLYN DESERVES MORE CREDIT THAN THAT SHIT HEEL.

That was a really funny movie though...

[div]

Ever see the buffy the vampire slayer movie? there was a vamp guy who died for like 15 mins of the movie. Laughably the worst vampire in history.

Paul Reubens - aka PeeWee Herman. It's just my opinion, but he was the only thing that made that movie worth watching. All the acting in Buffy... was bad, but he was comically bad, and i laughed my ass off.

Haven't seen Van Helsing yet... planning to go tomorrow... I won't get my hopes up for a great movie, thanks Junkie, but I'm always up for eye-candy....

[Lost Traveler]

well after JCs review this is redundant but oh well

[junkie christ]

Ever see the buffy the vampire slayer movie? there was a vamp guy who died for like 15 mins of the movie. Laughably the worst vampire in history.

Paul Reubens - aka PeeWee Herman. It's just my opinion, but he was the only thing that made that movie worth watching. All the acting in Buffy... was bad, but he was comically bad, and i laughed my ass off.

Haven't seen Van Helsing yet... planning to go tomorrow... I won't get my hopes up for a great movie, thanks Junkie, but I'm always up for eye-candy....

its worth a shot either way
esp if you like eyecandy, youll dig it.

and LT, i never read their reviews, but damn, thats pretty similiar, mabye i should start!! thx for the link......

[Nigredo]

It was great, but I think it had to much action in it.

[Lost Traveler]

My NG review

aaaa it was errr ....ok ...... The girls were hot, frier tuck got a few jokes in (not many) Wolverine played.........wolverine......The ending just did not work (tooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo lion King) and that bridge come on we're just getting silly silly.


if you really need to see it catch a matinee or wait to rent/ (dollar theatre)