3: THREE, I Have Three Wives. 2: TWO, I Have...

Excerpt from Van Helsing in Fifteen Minutes by Cleolinda:

VAN HELSING: I'm going to shoot him!

ANNA: Don't shoot him!

VAN HELSING: I'm going to shoot him!

ANNA: Don't shoot him!

VAN HELSING: I'm going to shoot him!

ANNA: Don't shoot him!

VAN HELSING: He's not your brother anymore! He's just a bunch of pixels!

Wasn't going to write about this movie, but I needed an excuse to quote that. So here goes.

If I tell you all to not go see Van Helsing, will any of you actually take any notice? Haven't you already heard exactly the same thing from pretty much anybody you talk to? Hadn't I been told myself not to bother? Yes, I had, and I went anyway. My defense is it had David Wenham, I really liked The Mummy Returns by the same director, and, well, I didn't have to pay. What's your excuse?

It's an interesting observation that despite being told it's awful people seem to be going to see it anyway. Taglines noticed. It makes me slightly uneasy. Bad movies. They don't need any encouragement from us lot, and they certainly aren't deserving of our hard earned cash.

Not to say "I told you so," but, I told you so. Unfortunately, not in writing, but to friends and anybody that would listen, I have been alternately squeeing and bitching about this project since I first heard about it.

Squee: David Wenham.

Bitch: I read Dracula several years ago. It's a good story, Van Helsing's an interesting character in it. A movie focussing more on him sounds like something with quite a bit of potential. However as soon as I heard 'Hugh Jackman,' 'werewolf,' and 'monster-fest' it seemed immediately obvious to me that they were going to completely destroy the idea. They just lifted the name, with barely a nod to the original character, which in my eyes is just rude. It could still have been a good movie if they'd bothered to come up with, y'know, a storyline. But even before the trailer came out I had my doubts. And the trailer did nothing to reassure me, as even that seemed predictable and over-CGI-ed.

It's a one-man show of LXG, with Kate Beckinsale's bottom thrown in for good luck. The one-liners aren't funny, and there are things that Brendan Fraser can pull off that Hugh Jackman just can't. To coin a popular fanfic term: Plot? What plot?

Unless you're londonmark you shouldn't bother. Seriously, worst thing I've seen all year. (londonmark is the exception for the purely selfish reason that I'd quite like to read some deleted scenes. The parody linked to above has some good bits, but it's not a patch on what he can do.)