I had no reason to think this would be a good movie, but I thought it would at least be a ride. What a shame. There’s just too much comedy here, and I really don’t want to sound like a grumpy curmudgeon, I think it’s a valid point. I actually sort of loved the same director’s The Mummy, and even though I still laughed at that movie’s silliest moment (Rachel Weisz on the library ladder), it was about as far as I could go in terms of “silly” comedy in an action-adventure movie: in fact, I probably only accepted it because Rachel Weisz is innately funny. Stephen Sommers seems to love trying to recreate old-fashioned light-hearted cinema, but it’s never going to work for me, especially when you’re dealing with every classic movie monster at once. Worst of all is Kate Beckinsale, who actually looked good in the trailer for the movie, but turns out to spend the movie acting like – and it took me nearly the whole movie to realise this – Heather Graham’s “acting” in the movie-within-a-movie of Bowfinger. Hilarious, yes… but probably not intended like the other “comedy” of Van Helsing.

Good points: the effects are good, but who cares?

This entry was posted on Monday, August 16th, 2004 at 12:21 pm in Movie Reviews, unrated. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.