Reviews

"Northanger Abbey" is one of my favorite Austen novels, because it so wittily satirizes the melodramatic phase that many teen-aged girls go through, even today. So I was particularly looking forward to this dramatization. It wasn't long before I realized that the movie has warped Austen's work into exactly the kind of story she was satirizing.

It isn't an issue of adapting the work for the screen, but of "updating" by deliberately increasing the melodramatic and sexual aspects of the work, which resulted in a treatment that is exactly the opposite of what Austen wrote.

For instance, when Catherine sees Henry at the ball in Bath with a woman, in the novel it specifically states that she is denied the pleasure of blanching and looking stricken because she knows that the woman cannot be anyone other than his sister. In the movie, she blanches and looks stricken and only recovers when the woman is introduced as his sister. Catherine meets Eleanor's forbidden lover early in the novel at Bath, when they are walking with Henry. He begs Catherine not to reveal the meeting to his father. Not only did this not take place in the novel -- the young man is not even mentioned until the last page of the novel! -- Austen would never have countenanced such deception of a parent by any of her heroes or heroines. It is, however, a staple of the Gothic romance novel.

Northanger Abbey is presented as exactly what it is not; unfortunately for the filmmaker, it was merely an abbey, not a sinister Gothic castle, but he did not let that little detail get in his way. General Tilney is explicitly painted as a cold and greedy tyrant who only married his wife for her money and made her life a living hell, something which cannot be supported by the novel.

Catherine is thrown out of the Abbey in the middle of the night, rather than the next morning; anything for melodrama. And then there is Isabella's blatant seduction by Frederick. So much more melodramatic and "accessible" to a modern audience than a mere flirtation. Such travesties lead one to contemplate urging changes to the copyright laws, and to wonder why it is that filmmakers think that they can improve upon what the generations have already tested and pronounced perfect.

Well, it's certainly not as bad as it could be (the trailer for 'Soul Plane' convinced me of that), but it's not as good as it could be, either. The problem seems to be that the director had no idea other than to put all of these monsters together in one movie. Once he'd achieved that, he didn't seem to much care about the rest of the movie, which served primarily as a means of transitioning from one action scene to another. He never made up his mind whether he was creating a serious monster movie, a monster movie with humorous overtones, a parody of monster movies, or an homage to monster movies, or some combination of the above.

The product is disjointed, uneven, unrealized. The soundtrack was relentless, bombastic, and relentlessly derivative. The monsters are so overblown and unrealistic that they lose any power to frighten; they are clearly the creation of mad hackers, not mad scientists. They are incarnations of bits and bytes, not incarnations of evil. The movie lacks any real suspense; we don't much care whether CGI characters disappear from the Matrix – I mean, the movie, and every other 'plot twist' is telegraphed two weeks in advance. Was anyone surprised to discover what or who the 'Left Hand of God' was? Or that Anna did see her brother again?

The script provides opportunities for humor, but none are realized due to poor timing and delivery. The biggest laughs came in response to what were evidently intended to be pathos-laden scenes, but were pathetic in a different meaning of the term. The human characters are as flat and two-dimensional as the digital characters. The blame for this lies with the director and the writers, not the actors. They did what they could with what they were given, but it is clear that the director's real concern was with the virtual characters.

Exposition is not character development. All we know about the characters is what we are told. Van Helsing never convinced me that he was the scourge of evil; he seemed more like a nice guy caught in the wrong movie and trying to make the best of the situation. He kills monster as a means to self-realization? That New Age psychobabble doesn't even make sense today, let alone in the 19th century. Is he supposed to be a dark, brooding figure, or one with his tongue firmly in his cheek? If the second, his tongue keeps slipping, as does his accent. I heard American, English, and Australian, often in the same sentence. Or was that an obtuse reference to his being a citizen of the world? Others have remarked on the similarities to Hugh Jackman's other franchise character, Wolverine. Suffice it to say that midway through the movie, we were referring to him as 'Logan Van Helsing.' Except that Logan, a true cartoon character, displays a deeper level of angst and human suffering that Van Helsing. We laughed when the werewolf howled.

Anna Valerious looks like Wonder Woman by way of Transylvania. There is as much chemistry between Van Helsing and Anna as would be expected between a human and a cartoon character, as well. Unfortunately, her redemption scene elicited giggles and whispers of 'Simba,' rather than sniffles and tears. Well, at least she finally gets to see the sea.

Dracula began with a bang and ended with a whimper. The character was wonderfully campily evil to start, but lost all control of his accent and his sense of proportion mid-way through the movie. Apparently his 'I am hollow speech' was supposed to be pitiful; it was merely embarrassing. Matthew Arnold and T.S. Eliot said it better, and so did Darth Vadar. 'Come to the dark side' is much more evocative than 'Join me. We can be partners.' One is an invitation to become one with evil; the other to open a fast food franchise. However, we suspect that it was merely a trick for Nine-Fingered Vladislaus to get his preciousssss – I mean, his ring – back from that thief he hates forever.

Plot holes are legion, but a few will suffice. Dracula cannot be killed with a stake through the heart, only by a werewolf; holy water, crosses, and necklaces of garlic also have no effect. Why not? No explanation is given for this violation of hundreds of years of folklore, legend, myth, and tradition. People have lived in a village that has been attacked by vampires for 400 years, and it's never occurred to a soul to upstakes and seek a new life in a new world? And the Knights of the Holy Order wait until there are only two Valeriouses (or should that be Valeri?) left before they lend a hand? That's what I call management by exception. Finally, Van Helsing can remember fighting the Romans at Masada, but he's doesn't look a day over 35. In a different movie, we could put that down to his regenerative abilities; in this one, it has 'prequel' written all over it.