VAN HELSING
½ (two and one half stars)
Raising the stakes.
Running time: 132 minutes. Rated PG-13 (action violence, frightening images, sensuality). At the Astor Plaze, the Union Square, the Harlem U.S.A. and others.
HOLLYWOOD’S silly season – a.k.a. summer – gets off to a flying, climbing and frightening start with “Van Helsing,” a nonstop collection of cliffhangers that contrives to bring together Dracula, Frankenstein’s monster and the Wolf Man.
This $100 million blockbuster begins with a black-and-white prologue that’s a fairly straight homage to “The Bride of Frankenstein,” complete with torch-bearing villagers.
But it’s pretty clear that writer-director Stephen Sommers has his tongue in his cheek when the scene changes to Paris, where Van Helsing is battling Mr. Hyde (Robbie Coltrane) in the belfry of Notre Dame cathedral.
This is not your father’s – or Bram Stoker’s – sexagenarian vampire hunter.
This Van Helsing (his first name changed from Abraham to Gabriel), splendidly embodied by a hunky Hugh Jackman in his first real movie-star lead, is the Vatican’s late 19th-century answer to James Bond, a swashbuckling secret agent dispatched to put down monsters around the world.
Accompanied by the gadget-happy equivalent of Q, a monk named Carl (David Wenham), the leather-coated and crossbow-carrying Van Helsing travels to Transylvania for his latest mission.
He’s to take on Dracula (a wonderfully hammy Richard Roxburgh, who played a different kind of nobleman in “Moulin Rouge”), who is bent on destroying the two surviving members of a gypsy royalty.
Anna (Kate Beckinsale, most recently a vampire in “Underworld,” but a devoted vampire hunter here) initially spurns Van Helsing’s offer of help, but changes her mind after her brother (Will Kemp) is bitten and turned into the Wolf Man.
There is fun to be had at “Van Helsing,” but it requires considerable suspension of disbelief at the apparently deliberately ridiculous plot necessary to bring the three monsters together.
Dracula is planning to use Frankenstein’s monster (a sympathetic Shuler Hensley) as a sort of generator to revive the thousands of offspring he sired with his three brides, all of whom were born dead.
The brides (European actresses Elena Anaya, Silivia Colloca and Josie Maran) are Sommers’ homage to Hammer Films’ racier horror films of the ’60s and ’70s.
Their topless (sans nipples) aerial attack on a Transylvanian village is the first of a series of bravura sequences in a movie that has so many of them – there are not one but two chases over collapsed bridges – that it almost becomes wearying.
This relentlessly over-the-top style mostly works because the film is peppered with funny one-liners, as when Dracula asks Igor (an amusing Kevin J. O’Connor), the hunchbacked assistant he acquired from Dr. Frankenstein, why he’s torturing the Wolf Man, whom Dracula is holding as a hostage to obtain Frankenstein’s monster.
“It’s what I do,” he replies.
This approach is not necessarily going to sit well with purists, though they may appreciate the breathtaking visuals (photographed by Allen Daviau of “E.T.”), stunts and special effects.
The most memorable effect comes at a lavish costume ball – choreographed by Cirque du Soleil – at which Dracula memorably demonstrates he still casts no shadow (though in this version, he can’t be stopped by daylight, crosses or holy water).
“Van Helsing” is more amusing and exciting than frightening, though there are probably enough genuine shocks to generate a box-office stampede and numerous tie-ins – a video game, an animated prequel, an upcoming TV series – as well as the inevitable sequel.