Movie Review: Bram Stoker's Dracula

Bram Stoker's Dracula: Torgo disapproves

Oh, what a terrible movie.

It's not just bad, it's awkward, disappointing and sad. There are so many awful things here:

1) It's shot in LA. Despite at least half of the scenes taking place out of doors, every scene seems like a soundstage. And not a good one, more like on SNL, when they're clearly on a stage in front of a backdrop.

2) It's entirely unjustifiably pretentious. There are enough boring camera tricks and uninteresting special effects shots and quick cuts and layered images and bad transition shots to fill a dozen high school senior project movies. Francis Ford Coppola seems to think he's creating a visual masterpiece. He's not.

3) Keanu Reeves. I read that Coppola regrets casting him. Good. He did this after "Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey" (which I remember liking). I thought he'd be perfect for the role of Jonathan Harker after reading the book. I neglected to realize he'd half-heartedly attempt a British accent and a level of seriousness he just can't pull off.

4) Winona Ryder. They changed a bunch of the book to make it a love story between Mina and Dracula. Ryder's Mina, though, never seems like someone to make me join the undead and wait 400 years for. She's just not that interesting.

5) Soft core porn. I have no problem with nudity. I'd rather movies have sex than violence. But Coppola comes across as a juvenile boob-freak here. Look! Boobs! Is this supposed to be a romantic epic? Why, then, is that wolf raping Sadie Frost? Couldn't that have been implied and not just casually captured on film.

6) Accents. Not just Keanu. Why make a movie where Gary Oldman and Anthony Hopkins, who are British, have to use Eastern European accents, while Reeves and Ryder (and Tom Waits, who's always cool), who are American, have to use British accents, while Cary Elwes, who's British, uses a British accent, even though his natural accent sounds fake? Add in Bill Campbell as a goofy Texan (which is true to the book) and it's a hodgepodge of silly sounds -- Oldman is the only respectable one.

7) Gary Oldman. He's so good in a few scenes that it's easy to forget how bad everything is. Like the book, he's at his best in the beginning, at his castle. The movie makes the mistake of showing him often in England. I discounted the book for keeping him out of the rest of the book, but maybe that was the right call. Once he's been established, there isn't much room for him to progress. And Coppola has no idea what to do with him. And Ryder brings him down.

Ok, that's enough of that. Lastly, Rainster just wrote about Army of Darkness. If anything, Coppola steals Sam Raimi's playbook but where Raimi is openly silly, Coppola is accidentally silly.