Sunday, May 09, 2004
Three Gallons of Well-Directed Venom
I saw "Van Helsing" Saturday evening. Now I will review "Van Helsing".
I could make this quick. I could tell you not to see "Van Helsing". I could tell you that "Van Helsing" is probably the worst movie I have seen in my entire life (and bear in mind that I have seen not one but two Pauly Shore movies). I could tell you that watching "Van Helsing" was like watching "Mystery Science Theatre 3000" without the sarcastic remarks. I could tell you that, as I was watching "Van Helsing," I kept expecting Kevin Costner to appear. But if I were to tell you any of these things, you'd probably just go see the damned movie, and I cannot overemphasize how bad an idea that would be.
Before we continue: as with all of my reviews, this one contains spoilers, so don't read it if you don't want to know what happens. However, refraining from reading it would imply that you're planning on seeing it yourself, and if you're doing that you obviously have no respect for my opinion in the first place.
A synopsis: Gabriel Van Helsing (Hugh Jackman) is a monster hunter of rather mysterious origins who does his work for the Roman Catholic church. After he successfully vanquishes Mr. Hyde, he is assigned to go to Transylvania to defeat Count Dracula (Richard Roxburgh). It seems that Dracula, after having been murdered centuries ago, made a pact with the devil for everlasting life, and that his father pledged to the Catholic Church that either a member of his family would kill Dracula or no member of said family would ever enter Heaven. Now there are only two members of this family left, siblings Anna (Kate Beckinsale) and Velkan (Will Kemp) Valerious. Oh yes, and apparently there's some business about a strip of parchment bearing a clue of some kind *and* an insigna identical to the one that Van Hesling sports on his ring (if rings with mysterious insignia and parchments with cryptic clues seem a little cliched to you, then, as Bachman Turner Overdrive so eloquently put it, "B-b-b-baby, you ain't seen nothing yet.")
For reasons that are never made entirely clear, Van Helsing asks his fathful sidekick, Friar Carl (David Wenham) to accompany him on this mission. Carl is a bit of a Q to Van Helsing's Bond, and you'll note that 007 always had the brains to leave Q in the lab, where he was most useful. Van Helsing, however, needs Carl with him, because Carl is the only character in this movie with any intelligence at all.
Anyway, Pinky and the Brain find their way to their destination, where they meet Anna (Velkan has just fallen over a cliff into a river in man to man combat with a werewolf). Anna, strangely, is not happy to see them, and orders them killed. Then, just as the villagers are moving in to comply, Dracula's covey (or something) of attractive female vampires moves in to finish off the last member of the Valerious family. Despite ample opportunity to do so, the three of them spent more time engaging in vampiric trash talk and writhing pointlessly about in what Director Stephen Sommers apparently believes is a seductive fashion. By the time they were ready to actually finish poor Anna Van Helsing is able to step in and save the day (with one of Carl's inventions, laced with Holy Water which Carl conveniently found lying around). In the process, he killed a member of the covey (the most attractive one, sadly, reducing by one the already scarce reasons for me to continue watching the movie).
This did nothing to assuage the villagers - as one of them remarked, the vampires normally only killed what they needed (you know, like a pack of Satan-spawned bloodsucking wolves), but they would now kill for vengeance. Anna fast changed their mind, however, mostly just by saying that Van Helsing was the first man in more than a century to kill a vampire. I'm not entirely clear on how this was relevant, but it seemed to do the trick, and Van Helsing's death sentence was commuted to an hour and a half in the company of some of the worst acting ever seen.
Then a werewolf that turned out to be Velkan shows up, resulting in comical encounter full of improbable coincidences (in the interest of minimizing typing, these will simply be called CEFICs on the several dozen occasions on which they occur throughout the remainder of the movie).
It was about at this point that I dozed off, so I'm not entirely sure what happened next. Fortunately, it doesn't matter. When I woke, Van Helsing had managed to locate Dracula (my guess is that Carl suggested that he look him up in a telephone directory), and was engaged. . . well, engaged at not fighting him, despite the fact that killing Dracula was his stated mission. Dracula seemed more than happy to refrain from fighting in favour of chatting, and took the opportunity to make several veiled references to the two of them having met before (like diarrhea left to bake in the sun, the plot thickens). Strangely, despite the fact that learning about his past was Van Helsing's stated motivation for visiting Transylvania, he showed little interest in these references, and decided that it was time to fight after all. After a CEFIC, Van Helsing discovered that Dracula could not be killed by any conventional means, a fact that Anna already knew but had apparently decided to withhold from Van Helsing on the grounds that she was dumber than hyena shit.
While all of this was going on, Dracula's progeny was attacking the village, now without its protectors. Fortunately, they spontaneously exploded in approximate unison (no, this didn't make any more sense in the movie than it does in this review) before having the opportunity doing any real damage. There was also another encounter between Anna and the Covey (which wouldn't be a bad name for a band, really) in which there was more talking than fighting, despite ample opportunities for the vampires to do the audience a favour by ending the movie.
After Van Helsing escaped Dracula, he found himself in the presence of Frankenstein's monster, who informed the hero that he was the key to allowing Dracula's offspring to live (as opposed to exploding at inopportune moments which, in addition to being bad for the old social life, hampers one's ability to serve effectively as minion to Satan's son), and was therefore being pursued by Dracula. It was also disclosed at this point that the Vatican wanted the unfortunate construct killed, despite the fact that Van Helsing said that it wasn't evil. This was what passed for a morality moment in the film, but was resolved rather easily when Van Helsing decided not to kill it, but take it back to Rome, instead. By horse, which Anna assured him would be fine - noting that "nothing is faster than a Transylvanian steed, not even a werewolf."
She apparently forgot about vampires, which is kind of odd, inasmuch as the film's primary antagonist is a vampire. Anyway, a vampire catches up to them, but they dispose of it using the classic "alternate carriage filled with explosives and wooden stakes" trick. Then Anna's lupine brother catches up to them, and Sommers - apparently having exhausted his supply of werewolf killing tricks early in the film - decides to finish him off in a CEFIC by dumping him off a cliff. This upsets Anna - the werewolf having been her brother, and all - which provides the movie's second morality moment - is it okay to kill your girlfriend's brother if he's a werewolf? It turns out that it is, which Anna eventually figured out.
The bad news was that Van Hesling had been bitten, meaning that he was due to become a werewolf himself in short order. Fortunately, Frankenstein's Monster, providing further proof that he wasn't evil, divulged that Dracula had an antidote for lycanthropy, so the carriage was turned around and back to Transylvania our heros go. Upon their return, Carl explains that he's managed to discover that (i) Dracula can only be killed by a werewolf; and (ii) Dracula lives in some icy castle that can only be reached through a mysterious door with a mysterious inscription on it, that is mysteriously missing a piece that happens to correspond exactly in shape and size with that piece of parchment Van Helsing acquired in Rome (How Carl figured this out is never explained, making this scene a little like the end of a detective story in which Holmes identifies the killer without spelling out his reasoning). When that piece is fitted, the code is revealed, and our heroes enter Count Dracula's castle.
The number of CEFICs that ensue are too numerous to mention, and this review is getting so long that even I'm losing interest, so we'll skip straght to the climactic encounter between Van Helsing and Dracula which, shockongly, involves more cheesy dialogue than fighting (in the movie's sole (deliberately) self-deprecating moment, Anna, pinned down by a member of the covey, is asked what she thinks of her impending doom. "I think," remarks Anna as she drives a wooden stake through her assailant's heart, "that if you're going to kill somebody, kill them. Don't just stand there talking to them.). For the benefit of the three or four people left in the theatre who were the least bit interested in the plot, Dracula explained that Van Helsing had been his murderer, and that the ring (remember the ring? No? Neither did anybody else.) that Van Helsing was wearing actually belonged to Dracula. Then Van Helsing turned into a werewolf and proceeded to kick Dracula's ass until clouds obscured the full moon, turning him back into a mortal, an opportunity upon which Dracula capitalized by cutting off combat to engage in more conversation. The he turned back into a werewolf and finished off Dracula. Anna died somehow as well, a fact which the movie may or may not have explained - by this point in the movie, the remaining spectators had been so desensitized to leaps of logic and unexplained events that it really didn't matter.
The movie concluded with Van Helsing and Carl looking up into the sky at Anna's face, which had rather mysteriously appeared in the clouds and was smiling down upon them. Frankenstein's monster was piloting a Tom Sawyer-esque raft into the ocean, for reasons that were not explained. I like to think that he was eaten by sharks.
As for the credits, in which Sommers dedicated the movie to his father, Chris Jones put it best: "I don't know what his father did to deserve this movie, but it must have involved war crimes."
In summary, Van Helsing wasn't funny enough to succeed as a comedy, and was far too stupid to succeed as anything else. In this regard, it is not unlike Carrot Top.
On the upside, about a dozen of us did have an enjoyable half hour long mocking of the movie in the theatre's lobby, so Saturday night was not a complete writeoff. The same cannot be said for Sunday night, when Survivor All-Stars at last came to an end. Let's review, for a moment, the problems with the show:
1. Boston Rob proposing marriage to Amber Brkich [sic] right before the results were announced. Christ, if I'd wanted to see The Bachelor, I would have watched the godammed Bachelor, wouldn't I have, Mariano?
2. Jenna Lewis also got married, which, in isolation, would have been fine, except that. . .
3. Ethan Zohn and Jenna Morasca are also together, and. . .
4. Richard Hatch has also found love with some Argentinian hotel keeper. Frankly, I was expecting the much-vaunted "final twist" to be a giant eighteen person bisexual polygamous marriage of all of the contestents.
5. Possibly the funniest Survivor in Survivor history, Rob Cesternino, was not given a single opportunity to talk the entire reunion.
6. Jerri Manthey *was* given the opportunity to talk, which she used to complain about how Survivor entertained people at the cost of the contestants' friendships, private lives, etc., etc., etc. This would ring somewhat less hollow if Jerri hadn't agreed to be on the show (twice), posed for Playboy after her first appearance, and taken every opportunity to put herself in the public eye.
7. Tom Buchanan (and, to a lesser extent, Alicia Calaway and even Lex van de Berghe) turned the reunion into an episode of the Jerry Springer show (cue audience: "Ru-pert, Ru-pert, Ru-pert!").
8. Richard freakin' Hatch was the voice of reason throughout all of this.
9. Amber Brkich [sic] was, for reasons unknown, invited to award a car to any other contestant. In a move that I hope will dispel those naysayers who say that she rode her fiancée's coattails to victory, she proceeded to ask him to whom she should give the car. Without any explanation, she chose Shii Ann.
And, lest I forget, the greatest travesty of all:
10. Amber Brkich [sic] won Survivor All Stars. That's like Alexander Daigle being named the MVP of the NHL All Star game.
There were some good things, however:
1. Rudy Boesch, when asked what he thought of all the back-stabbing that went on, said that he was glad that he was voted out early, because if he'd been around when all of the scheming started he might have done something that he'd regret. When Jeff interpreted this to mean that even Rudy thought it conceivable that he'd abandon his integrity, Rudy cut in: "No, that's not what I meant. I meant that if I'd been surrounded by all of these back-stabbers, I might have done something to one of them that I'd regret later."
In other news, it looks like Rupert will get a million dollars after all, since viewers were invited to cast votes online to award a second million dollars to one of the contestants, and Rupert is easily the most popular. I considered voting for Rudy out of gratitude for his provision of the reunion show's single bright spot, but was dissuaded by legendary debater Mike Garlough, who sold me on Rupert:
Mike: Steve, Rupert stole shoes. What more do you want?
Steve: Well, Rudy saved the reunion show, and also implicitly threatened Jerri and Jenna Lewis with death.
Mike: Yes, but did either of those events result in Rupert gaining shoes? The greatness of any event is directly proportional to the number of shoes it causes Rupert to gain.
Touché, Mike, touché.
Still, what a waste of a weekend. I need a drink.
Hell, we all need a drink.
|
I saw "Van Helsing" Saturday evening. Now I will review "Van Helsing".
I could make this quick. I could tell you not to see "Van Helsing". I could tell you that "Van Helsing" is probably the worst movie I have seen in my entire life (and bear in mind that I have seen not one but two Pauly Shore movies). I could tell you that watching "Van Helsing" was like watching "Mystery Science Theatre 3000" without the sarcastic remarks. I could tell you that, as I was watching "Van Helsing," I kept expecting Kevin Costner to appear. But if I were to tell you any of these things, you'd probably just go see the damned movie, and I cannot overemphasize how bad an idea that would be.
Before we continue: as with all of my reviews, this one contains spoilers, so don't read it if you don't want to know what happens. However, refraining from reading it would imply that you're planning on seeing it yourself, and if you're doing that you obviously have no respect for my opinion in the first place.
A synopsis: Gabriel Van Helsing (Hugh Jackman) is a monster hunter of rather mysterious origins who does his work for the Roman Catholic church. After he successfully vanquishes Mr. Hyde, he is assigned to go to Transylvania to defeat Count Dracula (Richard Roxburgh). It seems that Dracula, after having been murdered centuries ago, made a pact with the devil for everlasting life, and that his father pledged to the Catholic Church that either a member of his family would kill Dracula or no member of said family would ever enter Heaven. Now there are only two members of this family left, siblings Anna (Kate Beckinsale) and Velkan (Will Kemp) Valerious. Oh yes, and apparently there's some business about a strip of parchment bearing a clue of some kind *and* an insigna identical to the one that Van Hesling sports on his ring (if rings with mysterious insignia and parchments with cryptic clues seem a little cliched to you, then, as Bachman Turner Overdrive so eloquently put it, "B-b-b-baby, you ain't seen nothing yet.")
For reasons that are never made entirely clear, Van Helsing asks his fathful sidekick, Friar Carl (David Wenham) to accompany him on this mission. Carl is a bit of a Q to Van Helsing's Bond, and you'll note that 007 always had the brains to leave Q in the lab, where he was most useful. Van Helsing, however, needs Carl with him, because Carl is the only character in this movie with any intelligence at all.
Anyway, Pinky and the Brain find their way to their destination, where they meet Anna (Velkan has just fallen over a cliff into a river in man to man combat with a werewolf). Anna, strangely, is not happy to see them, and orders them killed. Then, just as the villagers are moving in to comply, Dracula's covey (or something) of attractive female vampires moves in to finish off the last member of the Valerious family. Despite ample opportunity to do so, the three of them spent more time engaging in vampiric trash talk and writhing pointlessly about in what Director Stephen Sommers apparently believes is a seductive fashion. By the time they were ready to actually finish poor Anna Van Helsing is able to step in and save the day (with one of Carl's inventions, laced with Holy Water which Carl conveniently found lying around). In the process, he killed a member of the covey (the most attractive one, sadly, reducing by one the already scarce reasons for me to continue watching the movie).
This did nothing to assuage the villagers - as one of them remarked, the vampires normally only killed what they needed (you know, like a pack of Satan-spawned bloodsucking wolves), but they would now kill for vengeance. Anna fast changed their mind, however, mostly just by saying that Van Helsing was the first man in more than a century to kill a vampire. I'm not entirely clear on how this was relevant, but it seemed to do the trick, and Van Helsing's death sentence was commuted to an hour and a half in the company of some of the worst acting ever seen.
Then a werewolf that turned out to be Velkan shows up, resulting in comical encounter full of improbable coincidences (in the interest of minimizing typing, these will simply be called CEFICs on the several dozen occasions on which they occur throughout the remainder of the movie).
It was about at this point that I dozed off, so I'm not entirely sure what happened next. Fortunately, it doesn't matter. When I woke, Van Helsing had managed to locate Dracula (my guess is that Carl suggested that he look him up in a telephone directory), and was engaged. . . well, engaged at not fighting him, despite the fact that killing Dracula was his stated mission. Dracula seemed more than happy to refrain from fighting in favour of chatting, and took the opportunity to make several veiled references to the two of them having met before (like diarrhea left to bake in the sun, the plot thickens). Strangely, despite the fact that learning about his past was Van Helsing's stated motivation for visiting Transylvania, he showed little interest in these references, and decided that it was time to fight after all. After a CEFIC, Van Helsing discovered that Dracula could not be killed by any conventional means, a fact that Anna already knew but had apparently decided to withhold from Van Helsing on the grounds that she was dumber than hyena shit.
While all of this was going on, Dracula's progeny was attacking the village, now without its protectors. Fortunately, they spontaneously exploded in approximate unison (no, this didn't make any more sense in the movie than it does in this review) before having the opportunity doing any real damage. There was also another encounter between Anna and the Covey (which wouldn't be a bad name for a band, really) in which there was more talking than fighting, despite ample opportunities for the vampires to do the audience a favour by ending the movie.
After Van Helsing escaped Dracula, he found himself in the presence of Frankenstein's monster, who informed the hero that he was the key to allowing Dracula's offspring to live (as opposed to exploding at inopportune moments which, in addition to being bad for the old social life, hampers one's ability to serve effectively as minion to Satan's son), and was therefore being pursued by Dracula. It was also disclosed at this point that the Vatican wanted the unfortunate construct killed, despite the fact that Van Helsing said that it wasn't evil. This was what passed for a morality moment in the film, but was resolved rather easily when Van Helsing decided not to kill it, but take it back to Rome, instead. By horse, which Anna assured him would be fine - noting that "nothing is faster than a Transylvanian steed, not even a werewolf."
She apparently forgot about vampires, which is kind of odd, inasmuch as the film's primary antagonist is a vampire. Anyway, a vampire catches up to them, but they dispose of it using the classic "alternate carriage filled with explosives and wooden stakes" trick. Then Anna's lupine brother catches up to them, and Sommers - apparently having exhausted his supply of werewolf killing tricks early in the film - decides to finish him off in a CEFIC by dumping him off a cliff. This upsets Anna - the werewolf having been her brother, and all - which provides the movie's second morality moment - is it okay to kill your girlfriend's brother if he's a werewolf? It turns out that it is, which Anna eventually figured out.
The bad news was that Van Hesling had been bitten, meaning that he was due to become a werewolf himself in short order. Fortunately, Frankenstein's Monster, providing further proof that he wasn't evil, divulged that Dracula had an antidote for lycanthropy, so the carriage was turned around and back to Transylvania our heros go. Upon their return, Carl explains that he's managed to discover that (i) Dracula can only be killed by a werewolf; and (ii) Dracula lives in some icy castle that can only be reached through a mysterious door with a mysterious inscription on it, that is mysteriously missing a piece that happens to correspond exactly in shape and size with that piece of parchment Van Helsing acquired in Rome (How Carl figured this out is never explained, making this scene a little like the end of a detective story in which Holmes identifies the killer without spelling out his reasoning). When that piece is fitted, the code is revealed, and our heroes enter Count Dracula's castle.
The number of CEFICs that ensue are too numerous to mention, and this review is getting so long that even I'm losing interest, so we'll skip straght to the climactic encounter between Van Helsing and Dracula which, shockongly, involves more cheesy dialogue than fighting (in the movie's sole (deliberately) self-deprecating moment, Anna, pinned down by a member of the covey, is asked what she thinks of her impending doom. "I think," remarks Anna as she drives a wooden stake through her assailant's heart, "that if you're going to kill somebody, kill them. Don't just stand there talking to them.). For the benefit of the three or four people left in the theatre who were the least bit interested in the plot, Dracula explained that Van Helsing had been his murderer, and that the ring (remember the ring? No? Neither did anybody else.) that Van Helsing was wearing actually belonged to Dracula. Then Van Helsing turned into a werewolf and proceeded to kick Dracula's ass until clouds obscured the full moon, turning him back into a mortal, an opportunity upon which Dracula capitalized by cutting off combat to engage in more conversation. The he turned back into a werewolf and finished off Dracula. Anna died somehow as well, a fact which the movie may or may not have explained - by this point in the movie, the remaining spectators had been so desensitized to leaps of logic and unexplained events that it really didn't matter.
The movie concluded with Van Helsing and Carl looking up into the sky at Anna's face, which had rather mysteriously appeared in the clouds and was smiling down upon them. Frankenstein's monster was piloting a Tom Sawyer-esque raft into the ocean, for reasons that were not explained. I like to think that he was eaten by sharks.
As for the credits, in which Sommers dedicated the movie to his father, Chris Jones put it best: "I don't know what his father did to deserve this movie, but it must have involved war crimes."
In summary, Van Helsing wasn't funny enough to succeed as a comedy, and was far too stupid to succeed as anything else. In this regard, it is not unlike Carrot Top.
On the upside, about a dozen of us did have an enjoyable half hour long mocking of the movie in the theatre's lobby, so Saturday night was not a complete writeoff. The same cannot be said for Sunday night, when Survivor All-Stars at last came to an end. Let's review, for a moment, the problems with the show:
1. Boston Rob proposing marriage to Amber Brkich [sic] right before the results were announced. Christ, if I'd wanted to see The Bachelor, I would have watched the godammed Bachelor, wouldn't I have, Mariano?
2. Jenna Lewis also got married, which, in isolation, would have been fine, except that. . .
3. Ethan Zohn and Jenna Morasca are also together, and. . .
4. Richard Hatch has also found love with some Argentinian hotel keeper. Frankly, I was expecting the much-vaunted "final twist" to be a giant eighteen person bisexual polygamous marriage of all of the contestents.
5. Possibly the funniest Survivor in Survivor history, Rob Cesternino, was not given a single opportunity to talk the entire reunion.
6. Jerri Manthey *was* given the opportunity to talk, which she used to complain about how Survivor entertained people at the cost of the contestants' friendships, private lives, etc., etc., etc. This would ring somewhat less hollow if Jerri hadn't agreed to be on the show (twice), posed for Playboy after her first appearance, and taken every opportunity to put herself in the public eye.
7. Tom Buchanan (and, to a lesser extent, Alicia Calaway and even Lex van de Berghe) turned the reunion into an episode of the Jerry Springer show (cue audience: "Ru-pert, Ru-pert, Ru-pert!").
8. Richard freakin' Hatch was the voice of reason throughout all of this.
9. Amber Brkich [sic] was, for reasons unknown, invited to award a car to any other contestant. In a move that I hope will dispel those naysayers who say that she rode her fiancée's coattails to victory, she proceeded to ask him to whom she should give the car. Without any explanation, she chose Shii Ann.
And, lest I forget, the greatest travesty of all:
10. Amber Brkich [sic] won Survivor All Stars. That's like Alexander Daigle being named the MVP of the NHL All Star game.
There were some good things, however:
1. Rudy Boesch, when asked what he thought of all the back-stabbing that went on, said that he was glad that he was voted out early, because if he'd been around when all of the scheming started he might have done something that he'd regret. When Jeff interpreted this to mean that even Rudy thought it conceivable that he'd abandon his integrity, Rudy cut in: "No, that's not what I meant. I meant that if I'd been surrounded by all of these back-stabbers, I might have done something to one of them that I'd regret later."
In other news, it looks like Rupert will get a million dollars after all, since viewers were invited to cast votes online to award a second million dollars to one of the contestants, and Rupert is easily the most popular. I considered voting for Rudy out of gratitude for his provision of the reunion show's single bright spot, but was dissuaded by legendary debater Mike Garlough, who sold me on Rupert:
Mike: Steve, Rupert stole shoes. What more do you want?
Steve: Well, Rudy saved the reunion show, and also implicitly threatened Jerri and Jenna Lewis with death.
Mike: Yes, but did either of those events result in Rupert gaining shoes? The greatness of any event is directly proportional to the number of shoes it causes Rupert to gain.
Touché, Mike, touché.
Still, what a waste of a weekend. I need a drink.
Hell, we all need a drink.
