Change Your Image
frightwig71
Reviews
Van Helsing (2004)
Can anyone sell me back 2 hours of my life?
Within 5 minutes of the opening, I knew I'd made a mistake by entering the theatre. After 20 minutes, I began to think that the box office should issue cyanide capsules along with your ticket to this show. It's not much of a horror show, but it is a nightmare ordeal to experience.
There isn't much of a story or character development. There's barely an effort to create any sense of time and place. The dialogue and action is laughably insipid. There is never any sense of peril or suspense, because almost everything is obviously pasted together on a Mac. (NOTE TO DIRECTORS: If I can see that the hero is fighting a CGI monster on top of a CGI Notre Dame, rather than a monster with some physical presence on a set that resembles a real cathedral, what's so thrilling about that? Where is the sense of real danger? If I see a runaway stagecoach driving down a CGI path heading for a CGI canyon, what's supposed to make me care?) Even the costumes are out of place: Jackman is dressed like the mysterious, brooding hero of a postmodern Western, and Beckinsale in her bodice and lycra pants appears to have been pulled from a Meat Loaf video.
All that's here is Wolverine from the X-Men fighting some CGI versions of famous monsters, presented with a relentless assault of loud noise (in Surround Sound!), going through the paces of various ridiculous and implausible scenarios. I had to sit through it until the end because I was with a group, but I actually slipped out for 5 minutes in the middle just so I could get a break. Towards the end, I started to feel like I wanted to cry. Seriously. Like another reviewer said, I felt like Alex in A Clockwork Orange being forced to watch such horrible images until I broke. As I walked out after the show, I wanted to ask the concessions people if they could sell me back the last two hours of my life.
It was one of the worst movie-going experiences of my entire life. If somebody asks you to see this next weekend, save yourself. You might even consider breaking off a friendship to avoid this drain on the soul. Life is too precious to waste on dreck like Van Helsing.
Barefoot in the Park (1967)
The Original 'Dharma & Greg'
As my girlfriend noted before I watched for the first time, this is like the original 'Dharma & Greg.' She's the free spirit, he's the button-down lawyer struggling to adjust to the new world into which he's just married. After six days of a honeymoon at the Plaza, where eyebrows are raised amongst the staff because the young lovers never leave the room, conflicts come to a boil at home when she realizes that her new husband isn't such an adventurous fella. Amongst the number of reasons she compiles to determine that they just can't make it after all: he declines an invitation to take off his shoes, in February, to walk barefoot in the park.
Of course, with your knowledge of romantic comedies about marital discord, you know generally how it all ends. How the conflict is resolved, beginning with some advice from Mother, may seem realistic and true to some. Others raised on self-empowered heroines may think it's a trite sell-out.
There's no question that young Redford fits the bill as Handsome & Charming, but it's a little hard to believe in him as a character who's supposed to be a stick in the mud. Fonda at this point had carved out a niche for herself in Wild, Untamed Belle roles, and she's fine again in that role here. But I must admit it was hard to watch without thinking about Holly Golightly, and imagining a sophisticated presence like Audrey Hepburn in the part, instead. The script also calls for the Mother to comment that she's never seen another couple who looked so much in love, but I really didn't see it. The couple seems at complete odds from their first evening at home. I can't think of a scene that illustrates why the two fell in love in the first place, except that they're both so young & sexy.
It's worth watching for the snappy dialogue, the work by Charles Boyer & Mildred Natwick as Mr. Velasco & the Mother, the chance to admire Redford & Fonda in their youth, and as a nice Neil Simon period piece. But it would be no crime for someone to attempt a better, updated remake. It could be done, and you probably can already picture it.