h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Vampire hunter Van Helsing is plucked from the pages of 'Dracula' to get a total make-over as Hollywood re-writes Bram Stoker’s classic novel, not for the first time. After a quick battle with Robbie Coltrane’s Mr Hyde, Van Helsing makes his way back to the Vatican, where his superiors inform him of his next mission – to help prevent an entire family from spending an eternity in Purgatory by helping its remaining members in their quest to kill vampiric Count Dracula. The hero loads up his gas-powered crossbow and heads off to Romania with faithful friar Carl, unaware that he and the Count share a past so terrible God Himself has stricken it from his memory…

…Or something like that. Frankly, plot’s not really what you’ll be looking for in ‘Van Helsing’, though there is an admirable attempt to wedge some in between the action sequences. The biggest surprise this movie has to offer is that it’s not terrible – it detaches itself almost entirely from the original novel, and thus avoids being a painful reworking of a book which has suffered enough in the hands of film-makers. Writer / director Stephen Sommers, responsible for the recent excruciatingly awful (yet strangely popular) ‘Mummy’ films throws everything he can at the screen, and enough of it sticks to be entertaining, though perhaps two-and-a-quarter hours is a little more time than it really merited.

If there’s a point to this film, it certainly went over my head, but Hugh Jackman and Kate Beckinsale soldier on relentlessly anyway. From their point of view, then, it’s a shame the show is stolen by Carl, a 19th Century monastic ‘Q’, who bumbles endearingly around Romania, but in a helpful way, and even manages to get himself laid in the process. Bless. Comparisons with James Bond are unavoidable when Carl shows off his latest inventions, but then it feels like that’s the point. Coupled with the Shakepearean-actor voice of Frankenstein’s Monster, you could be forgiven for feeling Sommers is taking the mickey every-now-and-then. But then, maybe that’s the point, too.

Good-humoured and action-packed, ‘Van Helsing’ won’t leave you feeling robbed of your pocket money, but probably won’t stand out in your memory either.