Writer-director Stephen Sommers does for the old Universal monster movies what he did for the Mummy franchise - turns it into a noisy, bombastic, special effects mess. Sadly, however, "Van Helsing" has more in common with the equally horrendous "League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" than with the Universal monster movies of the 30s and 40s. Like "League", "Van" is a startling waste of good material. Sommers essentially takes his sources at random and throws them into a grinder with the hopes that something tasty will spew out the other end. It doesn't.
"Van Helsing" doesn't contain an ounce of good dialogue, characterization or humor. Even the acting is sub-par for this genre. Hugh Jackson does what he can to make the titular monster hunter tortured (apparently seeing his victims revert to human selves when he kills them is a bit, shall we say, haunting). After creating an entertainingly complex Wolverine in the "X-Men" series, Jackson should be able to phone in this performance and while he does to some extent, the script doesn't give him anything to work with. Each scene is just setup for the next special effects debacle.
Richard Roxbury's Dracula comes off more as a vampire Pee Wee Herman than anything frightening or even compelling. And, of course, like all modern adaptations of the Dracula story, "Van Helsing" needs its own pronunciation of the Count's name. In this case it's "Vladislaus Dra-goooo-lia". Whatever.
In order to get all the monsters together, Mr. Sommers concocts a borderline interesting plot about Dracula and his brides needing to use Frankenstein as some sort of life force transmitter to bring his many offspring to life (it seems that Dracula's brides can only produce many, many stillborn, cocooned bat-babies). Of course this is a general misunderstanding of the Dracula mythology since Dracula doesn't have offspring in the traditional sense, he creates them via a bite on the neck (or three). But then Mr. Sommers wouldn't have been able to introduce the three sexy, winged vampire brides.
Even with all this material, though, the plot never takes hold. It scrambles for a foothold like a puppy on a linoleum floor. Mr. Jackman and Kate Beckinsale, who somehow manages to get less and less talented with each successive role, are left to flounder from one special effects setpiece to another.
Oddly, only the Frankenstein monster comes off as sympathetic. I'm not sure if it's because he has always been misunderstood or if he just resembles Peter Boyle's indelible creation from "Young Frankenstein". Maybe it's just that, like Frankenstein, "Van Helsing" itself is an unholy mix of exhumed ideas from a generation of monster movies. Unlike the monster, though, it never comes to life.
