10 Most Underwhelming Summer Movies Of All Time

Not only does director Stephen Sommers hate you, he wants to stomp on your memories of Universal’s classic monster movies, grind the films themselves into mince and sling the result in your face.

It was bad enough when he rebooted The Mummy as an Indiana Jones style adventure, but Van Helsing takes Dracula, Frankenstein’s monster, Mr Hyde and the title character and puts them through the grinder for two hours of non-stop noise and special effects. There’s always something happening but there’s no real story, there’s lots of action but no memorable set pieces and everyone is trying so hard to be funny that after a while you just wish they’d stop.

Worst of all is the twee, irritating dialogue that every single character has to utter, whether they’re supposed to be a centuries-old bloodsucker or an agent for the Vatican. Instead of being sinister, Dracula becomes so camp he should be selling breakfast cereal, and even Hugh Jackman is rendered dull. How he must’ve longed to get back to the X-Men franchise.