Dracula

After finally finishing the book, I absolutely wanted to watch the movie adaptation by the great Francis Ford Coppola, even though I had first watched it many years ago.

Although the movie is not bad, time has not been kind to it; at least not in my memory.  I seemed to remember it quite fondly, but the first half of it, this time around, felt boring and unimpressive.  It got better in the second half, but overall it’s just an average motion picture.

Synopsis: after many centuries living in the Transylvanian countryside, Count Dracula decides to move to London, England, where the number of his potential victims would grow exponentially.  His efforts are thwarted by a group of men headed by Professor Van Helsing, who fight valiantly to save the lives of the women they love.  The only problem is that Dracula loves them too.  One in particular might be his reincarnated spouse from before he became a vampire.

While the book isn’t an easy read and has its own issues, the story is told very organically.  The transfer to the motion picture medium, however, required the screenwriter to take a few liberties that mostly worked well (like the initial explanation of how Count Dracula became a vampire and why, which is never really tackled in the book) but sometimes were puzzling (why turn Dr. Seward into a drug addict when it doesn’t serve any apparent purpose?).

What didn’t work too well was the pace of the action.  Given the limited amount of time a movie can last, things have to happen in a fairly quick succession, and sometimes this stretches the limits of what is believable and what is not.  Let’s just say that there was a fair amount of stretching going on here.

Gary Oldman is spectacular as Dracula, and Anthony Hopkins is believable as Van Helsing, but Winona Ryder (Mina) and Keanu Reeves (Harker) disappoint.  Ryder actually made me wonder how, for a time, she was considered a seriously talented actress.  It certainly didn’t transpire in this movie.  Reeves, while excellent in later efforts like The Matrix, here is wooden and unengaged.  He was likely tapped just because he was the “hot young male of the moment.”

The Bottom Line: a decent adaptation of a classic novel, Dracula is an uneven final product.  While the story is intriguing, the screenplay is too crammed and the acting is sometimes weak.  Wojciech Kilar’s soundtrack however, is beautiful and timeless, and the makeup and visual effects hold up pretty well even after a couple of decades.

Grade: 6