I would call it a WOMBAT (Waste Of Money, Brains, And Talent), but no brains were evident in its making.
I was very disappointed, especially because I love “comic-booky” period adventure movies with plenty of comedy mixed in. Some of my favorites include the Indiana Jones trilogy, Army of Darkness, Pirates of the Caribbean, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, and even Sommers’ own The Mummy and Mummy Returns. But despite having attractive and charismatic leads in Jackman and Beckinsdale and a terrific comic relief sidekick in Wenham, Van Helsing fell very flat for me. It wasn’t funny enough to be a comedy, scary enough to be a horror movie, or exciting enough to be an Gothic adventure film. I would have loved it if they settled on any one of those things.
I think Sommers really did mean well (and he is a talented enough director for genre movies of this type), but he was overly ambitious and tried to do too much with Van Helsing, missing all his goals in the process. Perhaps he was too much like a “fanboy” and couldn’t take that necessary step back from his work to see how it was turning out. (I say George Lucas has this same problem, but much worse.) Essentially, Sommers set out to make a big-screen version of the Castlevania video games, and while that sounds like it could have been the coolest thing ever, it just WASN’T.
Oh, and Dracula looked and acted like a campy, gay version of Bono.
I think your appreciation for this film depended on your familiarity and appreciation for the old Universal monster films. The whole opening third was a direct parody/spoof of them. I think the viewers that were most disappointed were those who expected something in the X2/Pirates/Hollywood action blockbuster mode. It “took itself seriously” on the surface, but only because the originals did. The script itself was obviously ironically intended.
And criticising a film like this for lack of character development is like criticising Mars for lacking water. There might be a small amount there, but expecting it is missing the point entirely.
Kate Beckinsale has said she has experienced difficulty getting roles because casting directors see her as a maternal type rather than a sex symbol. My response would be that those casting directors really need to work out their Oedipul issues if Kate Beckinsale reminds them of their mom. And my recommendation for Ms Beckinsale is for her to break out of this stereotype by doing her next five movies wearing nothing but a pair of black thong panties.
This was one of only two films I’ve ever walked out on in the theater. And it’s not that I didn’t get it; I got that it was trying to be a spoof of old monster flicks, I got the James Bond walkthrough, I got the jokes. They just weren’t funny.
Remember in Sling Blade when Karl is having lunch with the guys from the shop and, wanting to fit in, he tries to tell the joke he heard someone else tell, but he tells it so badly that no one even realizes he’s trying to tell a joke?
Yeah, for some reason I kept thinking of that scene during Van Helsing.
I made my little crack about character developement because they so obviously tried to get us involved in Van Helsing’s psyche, only yot fall flat.
“You remember al those terrible wars throughout history because you were there!”
“My sins are known. Do you know what yours are?”
“And now you know why people hate me.”
It’s like they felt something had to added to VH to make him more Wolverine-like, but they couldn’t figure out a good way to do it.
Outside of any of the oh so obvious problems in the film, it was somewhat exciting to watch. Exciting because I kept expecting Kate’s clothes to fall off, which they never did.
And one more point in its favor: at least it wasn’t The Lady Killers. 
I kept wondering how he could swing on those rafters without bringing the entire building down. He looked pretty damn heavy.
I kept wondering why, despite the horrible way Dracula treats his werewolves, why did none of them ever try to take a big bite out of him before?
I was going to add something intersting or insightful to this thread, but i decided that the two hours i spent enduring this shite in the cinema was quite enough time to spend wasting my life. I have nothing more to say about van helsing. It is shite. goodbye.
I just watched this via Walmart’s Netflix. I totally agree with Big Bad Voodoo Lou
My thoughts during the film.
Fighting Dr. Jekyll. Hmm, didn’t he just get killed in that other lame movie…
How does the cop know it’s Van Helsing? Why is the cop angry? VH just killed a murderer? What?
Working for the Vatican. What is the guy in red saying? I can’t make out his accent. What is this? James Bond? Hey that bright light thing might come in handy if you have to fight some vampires later. Y’know, if it is simply bright light that hurts them instead of sunlight…
Fighting the Werewolf. Hey, isn’t that the guy VH is supposed to protect? You’d think he would be more careful than getting himself tied to a post as werewolf bait. I bet you it’s some kind of trap. Wow, even in those times levers get stuck. You’d think they would have tested it before the last male member of the family that will be damned to purgatory would use himself as bait. Oh well. (After seeing the whole movie…) Maybe they were trying to catch a WW to fight the BBV (big bad vampire), no that’s not it, cause he pulled out his silver bullet loaded gun and started shooting as soon as it was in the cage. Why were they doing that again?
Traveling to Transylvania. Where are they going again? Someplace you have to take a boat to. And then you have to ride horses on tops of mountains. And the sound track is trying sooo hard to make poorly lit travel scenes exciting…
Arriving at Transylvania. All you base belong to us. We fear strangers, so we must kill them. Gas powered cross bow? Isn’t there already a name for a gas powered rapid fire projectile thrower? Oh yeah, machine gun.
oops gotta go.