Stan Helsing

It is Halloween; this is the time one should be watching C'est la grosse citrouille, Charlie Brown (1966) or at worst Arsenic et vieilles dentelles (1944). But no, you are about to choose "Stan Helsing" (2009).

Stan (Steve Howey) who is out to make a movie gets stranded in a sort of Halloween Twilight Zone. There they are confronted by all the biggest slashers of the time. Makes you want to up-Chucky unless you are a Freddy-defender. It can be mockingly funny.

You will need to be well versed in a plethora of movies to be aware of all the joke references. Some of the movies: Species: The Awakening (2007) Shutter (2008) King Kong (2005) The Notebook (2004) Freddy vs. Jason (2003) The Blair Witch Project (1999) The Sixth Sense (1999) Saving Private Ryan (1998) How Stella Got Her Groove Back (1998) Titanic (1997) Stargate SG-1 (1997) Six Degrees of Separation (1993) Schindler's List (1993) The Hills Have Eyes (1977) The Last House on the Left (1972) The Munsters (1964) The Wolf Man (1941) Frankenstein (1931)

This is one of those movies that can go either way. I think that they tried too hard to be campy. Luckily Leslie Nielsen could pull off his character without breaking a sweat.

This movie is very funny! Mia is hilarious as the ditsy blonde, and her lines will make you laugh a lot. It is exactly as it describes itself: a parody, and this is one of the better ones. I recommend this to anyone who likes parodies, if you don't laugh at this, then you are seriously lacking in the humor department. Four stars! I've watched this movie several times, and laugh at each viewing. It's not for those who are seeking intelligent humor, it's geared to those who just like cheap laughs. The girls are definitely hot, and Mia changes costumes several times, each one will make any guy's libido stand at attention. After watching this on cable I purchased the DVD, and look forward to laughing again and again. My compliments to the chef who cooked up this winner.

You can easily compare this to the greats like Date Movie and Disaster Movie and everything by Aaron Seltzer! Bo Zenga is another addition to the "well it sounded good when we threw it around the idea table" club. Of course how can you expect much when one of his last pictures was the comedic gem Soul Plane. If your one of those people who hate that someone close to you drinks too much get back at them by playing the drinking game to this movie. It's simple the rules are you drink every time something funny actually happens in the film. This film is guaranteed to leave you sober. However i can't guarantee you both won't drink yourself silly to try and forget the movie you just watched.

Bottom Line folks, i wasted an hour and a half of my life so you won't have to.

Stan Helsing, a video clerk for a certain video chain store, is ready for a Halloween party with three of his closest friends. But before the party, he has been asked to deliver a bag full of movies to the store's manager, who lives in a gated community. What lies beyond the gate: karaoke, monsters and gay porn studios. This is going to be a long night.

Let me be blunt, when you tell me a film is coming from the same people, or the same sort of people who brought us "Scary Movie", "Date Movie", "Disaster Movie" and so on... I'm inclined to believe this is one more film that was a waste of time for the actors, a waste of money to make, and a waste of brain cells for anyone who watches it. Mysteriously, despite this bias, I enjoyed "Stan Helsing".

Sure, the humor is juvenile, revolving almost entirely around hookers, strippers, porn and the same gratuitous sex that we've come to expect since at least "American Pie" (you can say such humor dates back at least to "Porky's", but don't tell me that the new wave of it has any wit behind the smut). Somehow, with my mind turned off and my stomach full of Corby's brand whiskey, I found this film humorous and enjoyable from the first five minutes.

It has some disappointments. The monsters are such a minor part of the plot, sadly, and even Leslie Neilson has a role that isn't as funny as it should be. But such simple jokes as the porn title spoofs got me laughing ("Glad He Ate Her"? Classic) and I don't mind a few gorgeous women on my screen from time to time.

But as I say, if you're looking for a clever monster spoof, it's not here. The monsters sing a karaoke song, but their origins are not explained and they have maybe ten to fifteen minutes of screen time, contrary to what it would appear by the cover. But if you like dumb humor, like "Dude, Where's My Car?", this would be worth your time... especially with a friend and a bottle of Feckin Irish whiskey.

This is a good example of what happens when decent comic actors accept parts in a terrible movie vehicle. They probably need the work, so they do their best even if they can't hide that the movie stinks. For one, Kenan Thompson has a real comic flare, I only hope he gets better films to feature it in. And the other three leads showed comic potential too. I admit there were some genuinely funny moments that made me laugh, like the Karaoke scenes and some of the lines by the blond character (Desi Lydic). Unfortunately what comes between these few funny scenes, and makes up the majority of the film, was terrible. The over all film almost made me forget any of it had made me laugh. The bathroom humor, for instance, was just plain stupid.

And Leslie Neilson, what were you thinking doing this bomb? Hard to believe the same man who starred in classics like 'Forbidden Planet' has resorted to this for a pay check. He was funny in other comedy films, but why do this? My advice is to skip this one.