Spoilers aplenty, don't read if you haven't seen the film...

Well, we went to see Van Helsing tonight. Yikes... I knew it would be loud, it was. I knew it would be full of CGI effects, it had so many the film seemed to be animated. I have to confess to not seeing The Mummy except for the bits I've seen on cable TV, so I sort of cringed when my husband told me it was by the same person. I tried really hard to like it, but about 20 minutes in Sparky looked over in the dark and said "You don't like it, do you?". I knew he'd been really looking forward to it, and he liked The Mummy, but the nicest thing I could say was "It's just so dumb!". This was during the Jekyll/Hyde sequence, which just was SO not right.

I watched the entire film without my glasses, and still ended up getting a major headache. If you like comic books on film, where things are constantly exploding and catching on fire for no apparent reason, you'll love this film. Everyone looked great, the costumes were nice, the effects were pretty good (a little jerky), Kate Beckinsale was a good heroine (in a corset, leather pants and high heels in 1889). I liked her a lot better in Underworld, she was deadly serious, angsty and really tough. She wasn't a sissy in this film, but the Young Frankenstein comments just didn't really fit right, especially with her character taking everything seriously, and horrible things happening to her family. Sparky had said to "check your brain at the door and just enjoy it", but I didn't have enough Lorazepam with me, unfortunately and they don't serve mixed drinks at the theater.

Sparky tells me that this is Universal's attempt to recharge their classic monsters, but since they had the three major ones in this film I'm a little confused what the sequels will involve. The vampire offspring plot was too bizarre and over the top even for a comic book, maybe it would fit in an early EC mag, I dunno. Igor looked like he had a rubber mask on, Dracula's brides were interesting, but only when they were in human form, IMHO. And what the fuck were those little Star Wars looking creatures that worked for Dracula??? And then [SPOILER] they go and kill off the only character I like in the film. I felt like I was on a really long, loud amusement park ride... oh wait - they have already made an amusement park ride already at Universal Studios. I couldn't help MST3K'ing the thing, luckily we were sitting in the last row and no one else could hear us.

There doesn't seem to be a Kate Beckinsale action figure, bummer... I'm going to go pour myself a glass of Port, the codeine is not doing anything for my head.