Van Helsing, the character, is an eternally young monster hunter back in the 18th-century or so, working in conjunction with the Catholic Church to rid Europe of its notorious baddies, namely the ringleader, Dracula. Van Helsing, the movie, is a majorly corporate piece of Hollywood that only occasionally hits its mark, has at time some bewildering internal logic, and somehow stretches a paper-thin premise beyond two hours. CGI coats this film like the thick paste on my tongue after a five-day bender of whiskey and whoring. When used subtly, CGI can be great. But when you've got a CGI werewolf and winged Dracula fighting in the film's climax to the point where it all looks more like an iMac demo than a movie, it's just snot-slick garbage. So blurringly fast, you can't tell what in Sam Hill is going on. And Hollywood, please take note: CGI fur still looks like shite. Dinosaurs, fine. Talking dogs, no. Garfield, super-no. Oh, did I mention I really like when vampires walk on the ceiling? Always my favorite part of any film, and I don't even like vampires, especially after I broke my ankle in a Live-Action Role Play last year. Don't even try to convince me otherwise that "Count Lardass" didn't try to trip me when I was reading those spells. At any rate, VH did, at least, have some righteous vampire ceiling-walkin'. My biggest gripe comes from the "secret Vatican chamber" scene that had all demoninations covertly working together – telegraphed mostly by a loud, overdubbed "What in the name of Allah are you doing?" The blatant PC-ness of this was bad enough, but moreso it was just the most unrealistic part of the movie, flying demonic vampires and all. Look, I don't expect Christian missionaries in my Kung-Fu, and I don't need every group of kids in a movie to have one of every race. Not that I'm against any particular creeds, mind you, except the pathetic, knock-kneed, pandering Hollywood creed of trying to please all the people all the time. VH's assistant Carl is written as clichéd as humanly possible, but he's still pleasant enough, with a presence that evokes some kind of Thom Yorke-Martin Short lovechild. Kate Beckinsale still continues to give me the occasional wet dream, but her character was contrived and out of place. Come to think of it, she's usually contrived and out of place in my wet dreams, too … she sure seems to hitch-hike a lot. The surprise hit of the film was Frankenstein's monster, who here turns out to be wonderfully literate and well-spoken, and dare I say, utterly charming, in a sewn-body-parts kinda way. He vaguely reminded me of Brad J., a high-school football playing-asshole who nearly put my younger brother in a coma for not lending him his cassette copy of Huey Lewis's Fore!, but ended up in my sophomore acting class and consistently wrenched achingly beautiful soliloquies from deep within. The joke's on all of us, though, as my brother now plays sax in America's premier Huey Lewis tribute band.
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