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Looks like I'm the only reviewer who liked this film! Guess this is why they say "it's lonely at the top"! The review will be posted at Beliefnet.com later today.
I'm probably not the ideal target to "get" the film because I generally just wait for movie fight scenes and car chases to be over, and ignore most violence (it's all fake, you know?) Most noisy action movies have nothing else at all going on, so they're not worth the time. But to my surprise there's some other stuff going on in "Van Helsing," and I liked it for much the same reasons I liked "Pirates of the Caribbean" last summer. It's about twice as noisy as "Pirates" and stuffed full of special effects, but it also has a more melancholy, ruminative undertone which makes up for that excess. If you wait, the twice-baked scenes get over with. But if you think I'm nuts for liking it, you'll have plenty of company.
As we left the screening I asked my son-in-law Dave, who'd gone with me, "Was this a violent movie?" I couldn't tell. I guess it was, there's lots of monsters getting limbs hacked off, vampires shot through with stakes, etc. But its never bloody or deeply horrifying or even unbearably suspenseful. More myterious, lush. The violence was very cartoonish to me, but know yourself and use your discretion.
I thought I'd solved the problems of formatting the pieces I send out, but last time one person said the text came out in palest blue, and another said it was invisible! Let me know if you have trouble seeing this review, below.
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âVan Helsingâ Hidden under the piles of obvious things to say about âVan Helsingâ âthat itâs loud, busy, and overstuffed with CGIâis one more very surprising thing: it presents the Roman Catholic Church as a heroic force for good. You wouldnât think that possible these days, when suspicion of âinstitutional Christianityâ is at an all-time high, when best-sellers like âThe DaVinci Codeâ inflame bizarre suspicion, and headlines about sexual misbehavior erode what trust remains. But there it is: early in the film we see that deep under the As I said, you donât get that much these days, and one of the charming things about âVan Helsingâ is that it makes this proposition with a confidently straight face. Director Stephen Sommers had trouble with facial straightness in his previous two efforts, âThe Mummyâ (1999) and âThe Mummy Returnsâ (2001), because his exuberantly hokey stories were confusingly overlaid with campy, ironic elements. Viewers didnât know whether to laugh with or at the films, and retreated in general unease. In âVan Helsingâ the offer has been clarified: come along for a wild ride. How wild? In a scene about halfway along, Helsing is hanging from the outside of a carriage drawn by six horses, rattling at a furious pace over a treacherous mountain road. The handle he grasps is, naturally, coming loose, and he dangles over an abyss. But wait, thereâs more. Inside the carriage, Frankenstein sits in chains, urging Helsingâs sidekick, Friar Carl (David Wenham), to set him free. On top of the carriage a crazed werewolf, the wounded brother of the heroine, is raging. Also, the carriage is *on fire*. As it fades in the distance you glimpse an object tethered to the back bumper, bouncing along the road: oh yes, a kitchen sink. It would be fine if the movie gradually built to this point of intensity, but it stays here all the time. There are dozens of similar fight and fright scenes, and an elaborate, ominous masquerade ball with trapeze artists flying across the ceiling, and at least three sequences where a victim is hoisted up on a Frankenstein contraption to catch lightning bolts. Enough is never enough for director Sommers. According to the Internet Movie Data Base, the computer graphic studio Industrial Light & Magic has an in-house joke about the intensity of digital effects. Second from to the top of the scale is âWhat Stephen Sommers Wants,â and the top is âOh God, the Computerâs About to Crash!â So if you dig into âVan Helsingâ like an ice cream sundae, youâll have a great time. Itâs boundlessly enthusiastic and winningly earnest, a combination that is captivating. There are some horror scenes, but more âewwwwâ than truly nightmarish. Thereâs no skin or sex, but be assured that fully-clothed people can be pretty sexy. (Actually, there is skin, but itâs on harpies, naked flying girls with sharp teeth and eagle claws but, magically, no physical sexual characteristics. And when a good guy changes from a werewolf back to human form heâs provided with a modest pair of shorts, which is really kind of adorable.) Thereâs no bad language, apart from this early exchange. Van Helsing: âYouâre a monk, but you just cursed.â Carl: âIâm not a monk, Iâm a friar. I can curse all I want.â An impish smile, then: âDamn it.â So would the Roman Catholic Church return the compliment, and endorse this film that presents its spiritual powers so seriously? If so, it wouldnât be for any of the above reasons, but for the nuanced title character. For a film this big and noisy, youâd expect a hero who swashbuckles and shines. Van Helsing, however, is subdued, introspective. Heâs troubled by hideous nightmares, and by memories that make no sense; he remembers fighting the Romans at The mystery of Helsingâs melancholy is kept secret from him and from us till the end of the film. Underneath all the noise and CGI clamor, thereâs a movie here thatâs worth thinking about. Go see it, keep an eye out for that deeper story, but duck when you see the kitchen sink. ********
Frederica Mathewes-Green www.frederica.com |
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