July 29, 2005
Sucker!
Okay, picture this... a grown man who, even though he's adored by women everywhere, spends a disturbing amount of time with males a fraction of his age, lives in a castle, dresses like a third-world dictator, talks funny, and looks like he's never seen the sun. A glimpse of his face is enough to elicit gasps; his name can bring nightmares.
That name, of course, is Dracula. Wait... who did you think I meant?
Maybe, centuries from now, audiences will be treated to endless remakes of the horrifying legend of the King of Pop. Until then we're stuck with half-assed Dracula updates, of which WES CRAVEN PRESENTS DRACULA 2000 (Wes, how could you?) is one of the more embarrassing, if only because it actually had a decent budget and cast. Things get off to a bad start when we're introduced to good old Christopher Plummer, playing some Van Helsing or another with a German (!) accent so thick even Germans laugh at it.
This Van Helsing heads up (according to the sign over his doorway) Carfax.com, those friendly people who remind you every commercial break that you can get a detailed report on any used car anywhere. Just how detailed, I'd like to know. Are we talking accounts of sweaty high school grope sessions in that '87 Fiero between Brad "the Cad" Kirby and Lisa Mae Wazowski? Inquiring minds want to know.
Wait. No, they don't.
Anyway, Van Helsing is assisted in this enterprise by the wonderfully ineffectual Simon Sheppard, played by Angelina Jolie's ex (no, the other one), Jonny Lee Miller, whose sole (no pun intended) purpose in the film seems to be to alternately get beaten up by and then saved by either girls or old men, a situation I'd venture to guess Miller is not entirely unfamiliar with. Somehow or another, Simon and Van Helsing track Dracula to New Orleans, which, naturally, is in the midst of Mardi Gras, as it always is in bad movies. Mardi Gras season is, last I checked, only about two weeks long, and yet, whenever screenwriters need something to happen in New Orleans, it always falls right smack dab in the middle of the festival. Same with Rio, where it’s always Carnival, and Germany, where it’s always World War II. I suspect this is because, after years of working in dingy video stores and living in their parents' basements, screenwriters have lost the ability to see in normal daylight and must learn about the world from the E! Channel.
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Anyway, back to Drac: Turns out that Van Helsing has a daughter (hey, even legendary vampire hunters get lonely) living in New Orleans, as does Dracula (ditto). As luck would have it, both daughters are the same person. The biology here is never adequately explained, but I bet it's illegal in Alabama.
Jonny gets beaten up some more, though he fares better than Van Helsing, who receives some unrequested heart surgery. Lacking both women and old men to save him, Jonny takes the easy way out and surrenders to Drac's servants, not generally considered to be a wise tactic, but the guy makes it work. There's a big showdown with the titular (tee hee) bad guy, during which it's revealed that Dracula is actually Judas from the Bible. (This bombshell is rendered in flashbacks that appear to have been shot on a Teletubbies set.) He's been cursed by God to never die. But then he does.
Many threads are left hanging at the end of this one, like: Why did I watch this? Why is Miller such a wuss? And what ever happened to Lisa Mae? She was hot.
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