Recently, I finished reading my coveted copy of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, illustrated by none other than Jae Lee, and found it a rather enjoyable read. About midway through I remembered there had been a movie made for it by the acclaimed Francis Ford Coppola back in ‘92, but I couldn’t seem to remember having ever seen it. I think I did. But maybe I didn’t. I dunno. Anyway, I finished the book and thought I’d go rent the movie and check it out. Couldn’t find it anywhere! Neither Movie Gallery nor Hollywood Video carried it. They carried Dracula 2000, though, and even Blackula! But definitely not the classic Bram Stoker version, if you can believe that. So instead of venturing further out in a seemingly hopeless search for this movie, I decided to just buy it from Amazon.
It was quickly delivered the other day and upon getting home, I went straight to my trusty Samsung DVD player, plopped my keys on the table and inserted the 1st disc. Did I mention that I bought the special 2-disc collector’s edition? Well, I did. So, now it’s loading and I may have done a little skippy-dance to the ol’ lazy-boy trying my best to contain my excitement. I don’t know why I was so excited. I mean the book was good, but it wasn’t all that. It’s Dracula, for heavensake! Maybe it was just anticipation for seeing Tom Waits playing the part of Renfield; which was short but ever so sweet! Anyway, I think about 20 minutes in, it became apparent that this movie was a complete crap fest! And it had such good reviews! People were saying it was the closest portrayal of the book! Ummm, no it wasn’t! Well, maybe the closest yet, but still so very far from it!
**WARNING** This post contains spoilers to a movie made 15 years ago! Read at your own discretion.
This movie was so bad on sooo many levels, … I just don’t know where to begin. I suppose I could start with the screenplay itself, being written by some other hack, so Mr. Coppola can’t be faulted entirely for that. But he is at fault to a degree. Keep that in mind. He did direct it after all, which makes for a lot of influence in how a film turns out. Anyway, to the script! It opened very typically with a brief introduction to the man that is Dracula and all his great escapades of impaling people in the name of Christianity. Blah, blah, blah… loses wife… denounces God… and is ultimately cursed to undead-hood. What? Some of that could be fiction. Regardless, after this brief intro, the story proceeds to race through the 1st half of the book; which, as I said in my review, is the best part! Oh Hollywood, why do you have to be so sucky? Yes, we have to get all the characters introduced and in line for the story to proceed, but c’mon, you just destroyed the very foundation for the whole damn thing! There were only 9 key figures here and 4 of them became ridiculous ’sidekicks’. Not only that, but after that initial 20 mins (+/-) was up, this movie was no longer attached to the book… at all! Dracula was turned into a whiny hopeless romantic who develops an affair (of all things) with Mina, who becomes blinded by love for an undead monster sucking the very life force out of her! By the way, did you know that biting someone’s neck sounds exactly like crushing a bag of chips in your hands? I didn’t. Anyway, Jonathan makes a death-defying escape from castle Dracul despite being seduced and drained of his own life force by 3 voluptuous vixens and then runs down the street and meets dearest Mina-the-tramp to be instantly wedded. Well, actually he did, but not quite like this. The legendary Van Helsing proves to the world that he’s simply an overpaid, overrated, over-actor (more on that later) who apparently has no qualms with decapitating people he sees as different from himself. Renfield! The best part of the whole book and subsequent movie! A resident fixture in the local asylum who seems to have a leg up on everyone as to the philosophy of existence. Sadly, no one gives any heed to his belligerent proclamations in between his devouring spiders and flies. I really rooted for them to give him the cat he requested. Anyway, I’ll skip over the remaining 4 characters as they really aren’t justified in the movie and this post is already getting a bit long. You’ll just have to read the book to appreciate their significances.
So, as you can maybe see, the movie veered so far from the book, that it doesn’t really deserve to have the inclusion of Bram Stoker’s in the title, because while it may have started with the book, finished with something the writers thought was a cinematic good idea. And I’d just like to say ‘WRONG!!!’ Seriously, I could have written a better screenplay than this; and I sure as sin wouldn’t have had my lead vampire lord become such a soft portrayal. I mean, you have this guy, Vlad, who was a vicious ruler in kingdom and on battlefield, (famous for impaling his victims! Need I remind you) and subsequently becomes cursed with a perplexing immortality by which he can only gain sustenance from consuming the blood of a living body. Wow! And I thought life sucked when I lost my job and had to eat chicken and rice for 8 months! Something else that I wouldn’t have done… have my lead vampire lord succumb to the simple grace and purity of a 19th century rich girl who likes to type out her thoughts in a diary for later study as to why she has so few friends. Ok, I see I’m getting a bit too sarcastic and off track here. Let’s just finish this thought by accusing both the hack screen writer and Mr. Coppola-director-guy for making a complete abomination of a classic story that had already been made an abomination time over in the film industry. I expected better.
**You may want to stop reading now.**
Now, let us talk about the horrendous cast. I’ll name them first and then we’ll explore a bit. Gary Oldman (*blink*), playing the lead of Dracula. Keanu Reeves (*uugh*) playing Jonathan Harker. Winona Ryder (*sigh*) playing Mina Harker. Anthony Hopkins (*groan*) destroying Van Helsing. Tom-freakin’-Waits (*woo-hoo!*) playing a muted Renfield, though not included on the cover credits (*grrr*). Lastly, a bunch of no-namers filling the rest of the crew. Ok, let’s dig in. Ya ready?
First off, Gary Oldman can be a very nice method actor when he wants to, and I think that his role suffered greatly due to differences of opinion. He had some really great moments in the movie, but the all in all of it was that his character was butchered from the start by the writers, so what’s a man to do? He was, in fact, the only actor to pull off believability. Is that a word? Although, I think had the writers given him better stuff to work with instead of cutting all the essential Dracula bits, ol’ Gary would have made a far better dark count than what we have here. Not to mention he had like 8 or 9 different personas throughout the flick. That’s gotta be tough! I’d give him a C+.
Keanu, on the other hand, has always been a name without talent. Seriously, how did he ever make it in this business? I wanna know! He sucked in Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, he sucked in Point Break, he sucked in Bill and Ted’s other crap shoot, the Matrix trilogy… he sucked, A Scanner Darkly… he sucked (but not quite so bad), and so on and so forth. ‘But Faust, does that mean he sucked in Bram Stoker’s Dracula as well?’ You bet he did! I don’t think there was a single line he didn’t butcher with his monotone-confused-about-what-the-hell-he’s-doing voice. And they gave him a pseudo grey wig! Or it may have been a limited edition Rogaine’s spray. Either way, the entire character was just plain awful.
Winona. I’ll admit that I had a crush on her during Beetlejuice and Edward Scissorhands, but she’s just not a good actress by any means. A pretty face, yes. Worth millions of dollars, no. Anyway, here she plays one of the essential roles of the story and does such a piss-poor job of it that I could cry. Maybe she studied too close to Keanu, I dunno, but her character was for the most part unenthused and entirely unbelievable. And going along with the terrible screenplay, she managed to destroy the prim and proper character of Mina with a stereotypical, closet case nympho who begat a love affair with the count and later delved a wee bit too eagerly into the whole blood-gorge. Again, something that never happened in the book. I mean, I understand wanting to alter a classic to fit modern themes and all, but this attempt was both unwarranted and just plain retarded. And I won’t even discuss the reluctancy of Dracula to turn poor Mina because he looooved her so much, but then she insisted because she’d had enough of death, what with the passing of her dearest friend Lucy (at the hands, or mouth, of Dracula) and so took to feasting on Gary Oldman’s hairless, bloodied chest. Well, I guess I will discuss that. It’s just stupid! Sure, Dracula would probably get ‘lonely’ after a few hundred years… but he’s an official demon for chrissake! And exactly what would a demon want with a prude such as Mina? Other than blood. It’s just not rational… in a story about a 400-year old blood-sucking vampire. Oi’ve.
Siiiiirrrrr Anthony-I’m a reknowned actor therfore I can speed through my lines in a complete uninspired hollow voice and still rake in millions of dollars-Hopkins. I don’t think it’s any secret that I kinda despise the man, but just in case… I despise him. He was great in Silence of the Lambs and all, but I swear, he’s blown in every other movie I’ve seen him in. (Zorro? Anybody? Anybody at all?) And of course people say, ‘Well, you can’t judge him by that piece of flopism. You gotta check out blah, blah, blah.‘ And I do. And he still sucks. But i think his worst effort was in this movie. Van Helsing is supposed to be a great scientific mind of the late 19th century and the key performer against the whole Dracula epidemic. Mr. Hopkins evidentially felt that wasn’t a role challenging enough for him, and so morphed the character into one that is quite laughable. As in ‘off-stage’. Not one moment did I recognize the fabulous Van Helsing from the book and thus, extended my middle finger towards him on the TV screen. Yep, Anthony Hopkins… just another Keanu Reeves, but much older.
Tom-freakin’-Waits! Playing the part of a madman! Brilliant! I really loved reading this character in the book, and was hoping, fingers-crossed, that it was justified in the movie. To a degree, it was, but the writers cut almost everything from the character for any true understanding to occur. Ya see, ol’ Renfield is a looney-tune, but while incarcerated makes some very good observations on life, although completely under the influence of Dracula. He understands where he is and (Vampire-willing) where he’ll end up. It’s a bit humorous when he proceeds to ‘play’ with the orderlies and with Dr. Seward himself as if trying to hint to what’s coming. Sadly, however, none of this is portrayed in the movie at all. Just a simple nut in binds yelling at the top of his lungs.
The rest of the cast, as I said, was an even bigger disappointment. Lucy, the 1st victim which led to the 1st awesome undead hunt in the book, was made into more of a shallow tart than she was written, with several excuses to expose her breasts on screen, and was then killed off in a matter of 5 mins from turning vampire. Complete bollocks! The other 3 ‘key’ sidekicks had little (if any) development which led to a lot of ‘who is that guy again?’ It’s really sad. I mean, they each had distinct identities and contributions in the book, but on the screen were simply meshed into the filler category. Meat, as I call them.
So, I think it’s without question, I didn’t like this movie very much. I had high hopes for it, but it just simply failed to deliver anything worth the time spent making it or viewing it. Well, I take that back. The 2nd disc had all the special features and such, where I learned that absolutely no CGI (Computer Generated Images) was used in this film. We had a chance to see the methods taken to achieve certain effects and that was definitely cool. I mean, while watching the film, I could have pointed out a few spots where I thought CGI would have been employed… but not so! They went old-school! And I must say, they did a helluva job! That’d be the only thing I’d recommend ya to watch.
And there you have it. A very long, very critical, very sarcastic review of the crap big name directors and over paid actors dish out for us lowly consumers to chew on until much better movies come along and relieve us of our bitter disappointments.
Whatcha Think?