Written by Linda
April 10, 2010
People in the audience giggled uncomfortably as the film got worse and worse (with a few earnest audience members desperately trying to hush them). But soon it was all-out guffaws.
Scene: A dark and creepy night in 1880s Paris, with the artfully unfinished Eiffel Tower looming in the background. A studly monster-slayer, in a black trenchcoat and low-slung black fedora, battles a big, bulbous CGI-character in the bell towers of the Notre Dame.
"Uh... who is the monster supposed to be?" my friend whispered questioningly in the dark. "Is that guy trying to kill the Hunchback of Notre Dame?"
"No... I think he's trying to kill Shrek."
Apparently we were both wrong: The monster was actually Mr. Hyde, a balloon-inflated version of Dr. Jekyll, chomping on a cigar, and showing butt-cleavage for the delight of the kids (really!). The monster-killer disposes of Mr. Hyde, and thusly we are introduced to Van Helsing (Hugh Jackman), the Indiana Jones—or maybe the James Bond (considering his toys)—of the monster-killing renegades.
Van Helsing goes off to Transylvania, where in some convoluted marketing brilliance, Universal Studios has unleased Dracula (the hammy Richard Roxburgh of Moulin Rouge), the Frankenstein monster, and a werewolf, all wreaking havoc in the countryside that is always blue-gray, and kind of snowy. The village maiden Anna Valerious (Kate Beckinsale), who is some sort of gypsy princess, is trying her hardest to stay alive since Dracula wants to see her and the last of her family dead. But it is kind of hard to battle monsters when you are running in a corset that gives you a 17-inch waist (yikes!).
The strange thing about Van Helsing (one of many odd things, actually), is that the film seems to be taking itself deadpan-serious for the first 45 minutes or so. But when the films starts to become eye-ball-rollingly wretched (to use my friend Nick's word), suddenly Van Helsing goes... campy! VERY campy.
Just to confuse the audience (and they WERE confused for a good half-hour) the film doesn't warn of the impending camp. People giggled uncomfortably as the film got worse and worse (with a few earnest audience members desperately trying to hush them). But soon it was all-out guffaws. Were they laughing at the movie, or with the movie? What were the filmmakers trying to do? We had a theory that first director/writer Stephen Sommers (of the unfortunate Mummy movies) was trying to tip his hat in reverence to old-school movie monsters, but as the production went out of control (financially and plot-wise) he thought, "Well, what the hell... let's make it a comedy!"
The thing is, once the movie turns into a camp-fest, it actually works a hell of a lot better. But to get to that point, you have to sit through what seems like a separate really crappy hour-long movie (that feels much longer). Is it worth it? Well, not really. Van Helsing is nothing more than a throwaway (albeit very expensive) popcorn movie. If they are going to make a sequel (which they probably are, as I've heard that the sets near Prague were not torn down), let's just hope they stick to comedy.
