I remember the first time I heard about Van Helsing, which was to be a film inspired by the horror pictures, and the monsters of the cinema of yesteryear. It was a concept that excited me, because I have always been the type of person that loves a good old monster flick, and I am curious as to how these monsters can be re-imagined in modern times. After I heard it was a Stephen Sommers project, my heart dropped. His previous picture The Mummy Returns was among the biggest wastes of my time in recent memory, not to mention Deep Rising a few years earlier. Sommers was someone, to me anyways, who had the desire to entertain, just not the skill. Wall-to-wall action sequences do nothing for me, except inspire boredom and wall-to-wall action is Sommers' trademark.

Van Helsing in its structure is no different than Sommers' previous efforts. When there is no action sequence on screen, then the characters are talking about past or future action sequences, and the action happens almost on-cue like a clock striking every six minutes or so. There is a scene where bats are attacking a town, and I wondered to myself how much more effective the scene would be had I felt as though I knew any of the townspeople being attacked. I then wondered how much better of a filmmaker Sommers would be if he worked with someone who could squeeze some decent dialogue and character content into his scripts. Maybe if his actors were given something to say, we would enjoy his movies more. I wondered about/was skeptical of Hugh Jackman's screen presence in running a picture by himself. After Van Helsing, I still have no idea because Jackman, the title character, is left as cardboard as I have ever seen a protagonist, and is never given the chance to run with his role the way he should. Too bad for him, as we'll have to wait for Wolverine or whatever he is going to be in before we can truly decide his worth in this way.

I am getting sidetracked. My purpose in this article is not to dissuade the reader from seeing the picture, but to encourage the half-interested, and instead I go off on what it does poorly. I had to think about it for some time, but I finally realized that the quality or complete lack of quality in the script is not why I wanted to see Van Helsing in the first place. I came for the monsters, dammit, and monsters I received. While endless action is generally a boring thing to me, seeing well-animated monsters recreated on screen, and having them battle it out is quite the contrary. There is so much desire to entertain and give the monster-loving audience all they can handle, that a plot isn't needed to have a good time. Movie monsters have never looked so good, and never have they been given this much time or opportunity to entertain us in one film. Sommers' tendency to go overboard works with Van Helsing because I appreciate the material he is going overboard with. It also doesn't hurt that it was the first theater movie that I went to see with my soul mate over two years before I wrote this review.