I was unfortunate enough to attempt to watch Van Helsing tonight. This is without doubt the worst movie I have seen in years. I am told that Dude where's my Car is worse, but if so it has got to tread in a realm of horridness which I can't imagine. Van Helsing is what happens when a large pile of cow manure is mixed with an equally large pile of money, and then spattered on a wall with some kind of wood-chipper. I would have thought it was a spoof and laughed my guts out except that the actors took themselves so seriously. Even their one-liners are delivered like a sack of severed heads--lifeless. The story is nearly non-existent, the cuts between scenes make home videos seem professional, and the dialogue would have been more believable if written by chimps. Round this combination out with actors who's fake accents are so fake you can't tell whether they are supposed to be from Brooklyn or Transylvania (probably they don't know either), repetitive fight scenes which go on and on, and a number of obvious theiveries from other successful movies, and you have Van Helsing. I mean, for God's sake, any movie that rips off Tuco's "if you are going to shoot shoot, don't talk" is pretty questionable to begin with, but when it combines that with a "007 gets outfitted by quirky inventor" rip things get ghastly. I have never seen so many things explode into green goop, so many people/creatures hurled, dropped, squashed, or battered with little obvious effect, or so many "harpy carries thing while making funny faces" scenes in one setting. Nor do I hope to ever again. I watched most of the second half of this movie in fast forward (thank God for DVD technology) at this speed, and without sound it is almost bearable.