Dawn of the Geeks

With vampires, werewolves, Frankestein’s monster and hot vampiresses, and a hot leading lady one would assume that this movie can’t possibly go wrong. Oh, but it does. We’re introduced to Anna Valerious very early on. Van Helsing kills Mr Hyde and some extra calls him a murderer. Is he a murderer or a hero? Who can know? So he goes and talks to a priest from an order that doesn’t exist because they’re secret and is notified that he needs to go out and take out Dracula. On a screen is shown a picture of Anna and Van Helsing can’t stop stareing at it. And neither can the camera. About half way through the shot you’re going “we get it, he’s going to hook up with her.” This is a 2 and a half hour movie because the director tries to be dramatic where there is no drama in scenes such as this. After we learn Van Helsing is going to be taking on vampires he meets a friar who’s job for the movie is to be the comic relief. But he really isn’t needed in that area. This friar has invented many things and one of them is what looks like a grenade and it emmits the light of many suns or something. When asked what it’s for he responds, “I don’t know. I know what it does but I don’t know what it’s for.” In story telling there’s this thing called forshadowing where hints are given about what will happen later in the story. For those who missed it, this is a vampire hunting expedition and this supposed genious doesn’t know what a portable sun is good for.

For most of the movie there’s supposed to be a relationship brewing between Van Helsing and Anna however, there is no character developement and nobody cares. The movies attempts to make the characters deep. Is Van Helsing a murderer or a hero? Where did he come from? Oooh. There is all of one scene in the movie where Anna tries to open up to Helsing. He’s talking about going to the sea and she responds “I’ve never been to the sea.” The entire audience burst out laughing. Hugh Jackson himself looked like he’s about ready to lose it. And three hours later the director finally decides to move on with the story. He tried so hard to make somebody care about these people and it just doesn’t happen. The writers did actually write in quite a bit of humor into this movie. Unfortunatly there are many things that are funny that weren’t supposed to be. There’s even a sub plot between Anna and her brother which is supposed to make us care but most of the time it’s either not registering or just funny.

Aside from the fact that the story was terribly constructed, there are long periods of no real background music. But when there is music, it just blares. And it’s not even that good. All the dialog is set at a reasonable volume but as soon as some music hits, it just blares as though the director is expecting the audience to rock out to someone’s attempt at classic music mixed with a bit of rock. To top off this terrible movie, the ending brings out visions of The Lion King. I don’t know what they were thinking. The only thing this movie has going for it is the humor and special effects. If you want a movie with an interesting story forget it. This is the kind of movie you go to only because you want to hang out with friends and just want some easy entertainment.