"Van Helsing": What did you think?

A bunch of the MN crew just saw it this evening, what did you all think?


My opinion:

It is unbelievably bad. So bad its kind of fun.

The MN Crew seemed in agreement that it was bad, we just split into "Good/Bad" and "Bad/Bad" about 50/50 (there were about 10 of us).

So if you know going in to the movie (as I did) that its loaded with forced, hokey dialogue, stealing from every horror/action movie alive, and full of plot mistakes, you should have a decent time. This is the same director as the Mummy movies, and if you could work with that kind of cornball stupidity, you'll get it here (however, its not as good as the original Mummy).

I gave it a C-, but a fun C-minus, its one of this movies that would normally get a D, but was actually sort of "make fun of it as you watch it" fun.

I enjoyed this more than Hellboy, because Hellboy took itself too seriously and was too serious for its own good. This movie is so stupid its exactly what a very bad schlock horror movie should be like.

the lead actress is truly terrible, but hearing her try and say her badly written dialogue (and they give her a little too much to say at time), in a really bad accent is good for some fun times.

A few minor spoilers about the stupid fun (only a very short list):

- those little evil-helper creatures were hillarious: I thought they were evil Jawas, one of my companions thought evil ewoks... I thought they all spoke like Leia in ROTJ where she's dressed up like a bounty hunter ("Its the carbonite freezing")
- When they arrive at Castle Dracula, the weather is freezing with snow... yet its raining a short time later... Okay.
- Dracula is the first major vampire, and cannot reproduce successfully, yet there's about 2000 of them for that one SFX throw-away scene where the get fried by that bright-light gadget. You could lift that entire scene from the movie and it wouldn't have made a difference
- Some of those swinging vines did not appear to be feasibly connected to anything above them.
- Dracula was too damn funny trying to seem mysterious, sensual and evil... he came off like over-acting Euro-trash (which was funny, just not scary)
- Someone told the actor playing franskenstein that he needed to yell every, single line
- So when we do finally get to watch wolfman vs. dracula, we wonder what we're going to see... for the first minute we get boxing. Okay...
- How did they get from Budapest back to Transylvania in only a day or so?
- Why did they need to reach Romania (which the accurately depicted on a map) from the Adriatic when they could've simply sailed over to the Black Sea and avoided all those snowy peaks?
- that secret order of cliche Priests/Mullahs/Buddhist Monks was hillarious
- Speaking of that scene, was that friar gut who ends up following him "B" (the predecessor to "Q")?

so much stupidity, so much fun

While I didn't do this, it might've been fun to be a little drunk while watching it.

i am stuck seeing this on monday with some classmates.

please tell me it isn't as bad as it looks.

I did not see it yet, but what was your impression Bobak?

I'm supposed to go see it on Monday, would I be better off seeing another movie?

I liked it, but it was not what I was expecting. I was too used to movies like Blade and Underworld. Van Helsing has more of an old fashioned monster movie feel. Although I really didn't like the actor/acting of Dracula. Overall it was good though.

I thought the movie sucked. While there was lots of good ideas, it did not work. Here are some of the problems I had with it. On the plus side all the chicks where hot.



Spoilers:
1. How come they never explained Van Helsings past, I mean we are given one little piece of info and that's it. I mean is he even human?
2. Sometimes the CG would look and other times it would look like crap. For example when you first saw the Wolfman he looked like crap, but later when you see the 3rd one (trying not to spoil things) it looks good.
3. Frankenstein WTF? His character was not like the classic monster at all.


Overall it had lots of potential, but in the end it never came together.

While I haven't seen Van Helsing in theatres yet, I must say the female side kick character is susposed to take a role as a "Gypsy" character. The problem with this is- This characters facial features are way to contemparary, the kind of creepy face you'd see as an extra out of an Atlantis morisette video(Basically the features are to modern of this time to mask as or pass off for the ancient features of a Gypsy-type face). And the other inconsistincy was that the side kick character body was WAY to Skinny (almost looking malnourished) to pass off realistically as a Gypsy. Gypsy's however, were known to have very wide hips, voluptuos bodies and ( big butts )flowing primal hair- This girl in comparison to a Gypsy is nothing alike.

While it was not great it entertained me. The MN crew was hyper critical of it though so I guess I was the only one here who was not upset after it ended.

I must hit it w/Kate B.

neonightrider said:

3. Frankenstein WTF? His character was not like the classic monster at all.

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Actually, that was one of the truer protrayals of The Monster on film. After reading the original book, I dont know WTF movie makers were doing back in the day making him a speechless idiot.

But onto VH, the movie... it was nothing more than a continuous string of action scenes threaded together bya halfassed story. Plus, with VH's "memory loss" and "mysterious origin", didnt it feel like Wolverine running arounf in the 1800s?
Some of the set ups were TOO obvious and they couldve at least explained how Gabriel became human.I guess that's what sequels are for, but damn, with non stop action, they couldve explianed it breifly and not missed a beat.

Overall, the movie was "meh." At times I couldnt tell if this was to be taken seriously or as a parody. That entire final act was so hilariously over the top, like Kate Beckinsale swinging on the rope and catching whatever it was the friar tossed her, then surviving that fall, THEN the tears in heaven...GOD! Some good, if unintentional, laughs.

Castlevania 1: The Movie

Myself, my fiancee, and 6 other friends saw it last nite.

Myself and my fiancee gave it a D-

Rest of my friends gave it a C

Personally fellas, it was one of the worst movies I have ever seen. I fell asleep through the 'offensive orgy' of mind-numbing action that drowns out what little plot is present in the film. No matter what I tried, I just kept falling asleep. The comedy present in the film is uncalled for, dracula really sucks (Bram Stoker's version totally pwn3d him), and did I mention that the movie is like 90% action and 10% other shit. The CGI stuff is great but very much overdone.

Frankenstein was fucking stupid and useless although I liked the green sparks/plasma in his brain/heart.

The best part of the movie was that real hot chick (the sister).
The movie is total shit. 1 star for effort.

Overall I came back thinking it was pretty decent. I wasnt expecting anything and it was fun mindless entertainment. There was no plot however I would bang Kate Beckinsale multiple times.

Overall= C+

I thought it was very lame indeed. Some good effects and beckinsale is easy on the eye, but overall its just got no style or substance.

jaydubnb said:

Actually, that was one of the truer protrayals of The Monster on film. After reading the original book, I dont know WTF movie makers were doing back in the day making him a speechless idiot.

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I didn't see the movie, but I saw a trailer clip of the Frankenstein monster scene... For whatever they did right with the monster, they did 5 more things wrong. I'm not saying this makes or breaks the movie cause it's not SUPPOSED to be accurate, but the acting/dialogue was always really really poor in any trailer I saw of this. "How do you know he's human?" "CAUSE HE'S RIGHT BEHIND YOU!" (or something like that) Lame...

mog said:

i am stuck seeing this on monday with some classmates.

please tell me it isn't as bad as it looks.

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Its Worse! I pity those that have to go see it...i saw it last nite and am still regretting it..oh the horror.

Bah, I'm off to see it shortly. I may duck out.

I've quit judging movies so much and expecting to be impressed all the time. If a movie entertains me, which VH did, it is a good movie. That's all movies are supposed to be anyway, entertainment.

PS-Did you see it, Bobak?

Wife and I saw it yesterday.

It was a good "popcorn movie". Nothing spectacular, and the story had HUGE gaps, but it was a mindless, fun way to spend the afternoon.

Being a big fan of the classic monster movies, I think what I was most disappointed in though was the CG effects. If ever a movie validated the thought that CG is NOT superior to traditional make-up effects, it was this one. The werewolf and vampire characters were so obviously out-of-place against the real characters and sets that it actually disrupted the flow of the movie for me at times - I found myself more wondering WHY they did things the way they did rather than just enjoying the film. They would have looked good had the whole movie been done in CG (ala Toy Story), but they just didn't mix well with the actors, IMO. It's kind of funny in that the Frankenstein's monster, which used traditional make-up effects, looked worlds better than the "more advanced" CG work of Dracula and the Wolfman.

This, along with all the other CG work (which, as others have said, make up the vast bulk of the film), quite often had the opposite effect of NOT allowing me to suspend reality.

Still though, if you're a fan of the original B&W movies (or a classic monsters fan in general), it's worth a matinee, if for no other reason than flicks featuring these guys are few and far between nowadays.

It's not that bad as people makes it look like.

The "hero" Van Helsing as too many similarities with Dante of DMC

Frankenstein was kinda fun and all.

B-

I saw it last night, I didn't have the time to post in too much detail.

I posted a small review in my original post.

SPOILER Q&A:

neonightrider said:

1. How come they never explained Van Helsings past, I mean we are given one little piece of info and that's it. I mean is he even human?

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The movie strongly hints that he's the angel Gabriel: The Left Hand of God, thus he would remember battles long past and other horrible things. Still, it doesn't appear to explain why he's injurable, why he turned into a wolfman, why he can kiss a woman without "falling"... then again this is certainly not the movie to worry about those things...

Bobak said:

I saw it last night, I didn't have the time to post in too much detail.

I posted a small review in my original post.

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Saw it , was like meh.

"Man On Fire" was alot better

I saw it opening night, and I liked it a lot. For some reason it seems to rub people the wrong way, wheter it be special effects, lack of explianing some things that should of been explained, etc. I was a fan of "The Mummy", so I went into the movie thinking that it would kinda be similar since the director did both movies. They're kinda similar, but I think Van Helsing was better. You kinda have to be into the older horror movies and characters to really get into it. Lots of people thought it would have some kind of secret meaning or explination to Van Helsing's character, which it does to a point, but you just kinda have to fill in the gaps yourself. I will also state for the record that I'm a big fan of vampires, so my thoughts might be a little biased towards defending the movie. I went and saw it with 2 friends, 1 who fell asleep part way through the movie because Frankenstein was "too emo" while the other's favorite movie is "The Fast and the Furious." Needless to say they didn't like it, but they probably aren't the best people to go by. Overall, I liked it plently and am taking my girlfriend to see it tomorrow. If you like vampires and horror in general, you'll probably like Van Helsing. My only complaints are the Predator reference and the Wolverine one. Can't have it all I guess.

I did wanted to see it. But the only movie that I will see this month will be Troy--dying to see that one. Though it feels abit strange that Brad Pitt is Achilles.

I liked that movie!

There's an animated (anime?) movie coming out on DVD this week... we had it at Target. It looks cool, I want to see that too.

Saw it today. Definitely not a movie I'd pay more than matinee price for.

I went in expecting something along the lines of "castlevania: the movie," but it didn't even live up to the already low expectations I have for video game based movies. I absolutely hated dracula's character, the comic relief was awful, and the plot itself felt really badly hacked together. Some of the acting was especially painful to watch as well. About the only pluses were that dracula's wives were teh Hot, and they could suck me anytime and that it, despite its failings, managed to keep my attention through the entire movie.

Incidentally, I saw it with a friend of mine who's Hungarian by birth, and he pointed out the same thing about the route taken from the Vatican to Transylvania. I believe his exact words during the scene in which they were climbing the mountains were, "looks like someone took a wrong turn at albuquerque." He also pointed out that Transylvania was actually in Austria-Hungary, and not in Romania during the time the movie was supposed to be set.