But there’s another side to the film that nauseates me: the PG-porn undertone, aimed straight at all the adult heterosexual men who’re counting the days until June 13 of this year, when the Olsens turn 18 and these horndogs no longer have to hide a lust that is no longer near-pedophiliac. It’ll likely go pretty much over the heads of the dreamy tweens, but for anyone who knows about the online countdowns to the Olsens’ majority (to which I refuse to link — find ’em yourself if you must), it’s really, really icky.

This is an indication of the willingness I had, going into *Van Helsing,* to forgive a lot. For before the psychopath point, there is a self-indulgent black-and-white interlude in which Dr. Frankenstein is run out of Transylvania by revolting, torch-wielding peasants, as well as some jam-packing of Victorian pulp into the V.H./Hyde thing, which besides calling to mind *Hunchback* (which isn’t quite Victorian, I know) also suggests that Hyde may well have been Jack the Ripper. And I was only worrying briefly about vocabulary.

We’ve seen this story many times before, though rarely in such harrowing fashion, or with subtitles: Neandethal husband wants the wifey barefoot and pregnant. He hits; she cries; he apolgizes; she forgives him. Repeat in a vicious cycle. Intense and dark, the film — which was nominated for four Goyas, Spain’s Oscar, including ones for … more…

It’s kinda like an episode of some imaginary HBO series about love and sex and the best ways to screw it all up — hardly surprising, as it comes from TV vets Maya Forbes (The Larry Sanders Show) and Wallace Wolodarsky (The Simpsons) — and that’s just fine. This small-scale flick manages a kind of … more…

Who’s afraid of twins? I mean, sure, there’s the Olsens, but apart from them? Is there something so inherently creepy about a clone — which is just a twin born years later — that it’s automatically the basis of a horror movie? I dunno: Did Dolly the sheep run amuck and kill a family of Scottish farmers with an axe one night and I just missed it?

Could it be? With a duo like lovely continental Pierce Brosnan and classy dame Julianne Moore, and now this urbane opening, could it be that we’re in for something luscious and screwball and scrumptiously old-fashioned, Cary Grant meets Katharine Hepburn in the 21st century?

Quandung physics is the only possible rationalization for the fact that scripts like this one — with no drama, no comedy, no conflict, and not a single likeable character — get produced. But it is, literally, full of shit, and there’s nothing that sells like toilet humor, so perhaps the thinking was, The more shit, the better. I’ve never seen so much actual shit onscreen, along with the figurative shit. The movie reeks of it. You couldn’t possibly eat popcorn or candy or anything during this film, because all the doody will turn your stomach.

You won’t stop expecting Tom Hanks to jump in and dance out ‘Chopsticks’ on the big flat piano on the floor, and there’s even a party scene in which you can just about glimpse him in the background, in his hilariously inappropriate white tails, nibbling a miniature corncob. Cuz it’s *Big* — it is. And even for Hollywood, where originality is low on the list of priorities and stealing is fair game, this fluffball of a flick tries its damnedest to be so blatant in its theft that you can’t believe they got away with it.

You promised me, [blacked out], you miserable fuck, you promised me a decent script and some good action and maybe a little onscreen nookie. And when I got to the set and saw the 15th rewrite of the script — WTF? serenading assassins? torturing bad guys with popsicles? — and met my costar — John fucking Travolta?? — and called you to complain you said Don’t worry, they’ll fix it all in post. And like a stupid fuck I believed you. I forgave you when you saddled me with *Dreamcatcher* and I even forgave you when you “lobbied” for me for *The Sweetest Thing* but this was supposed to be my big break, my chance to be a star, and now I’m a laughingstock.