I totally agree with you on the "fun" part. Maybe even "funny", cause I watched it, and it felt like a comedy - and I wasn't disappointed. One scene, you have Anna, Vampires and Van Helsing shooting vampires, all in one line, and he misses the vampires! T Hankfully, he also misses Anna, else killing her immediately after the lecture of her whole family going to hell would be kind of horrible. First scene, you have someone wearing a mask and a wide hat, and by the eyes I thought it's a woman. BANG it's Van Helsing. Oh, and funny dialogues. And a crossbow that keeps dropping, keeps dropping, keeps dropping, keeps dro... You get it. And a werewolf, whose role is... pretty mich of a crossbow: being cool and constantly falling down from the top of the mountain aaaaaand right into the river down below. Again and again and once again. It's suddenly unexpectedly funny. And the whole "vampire disease" and "vampire babies" can be easily explained like a sort of gene-modifying virus transforming people into bat-people, but bat genes are dominant, so if you don't have a full-human partner, your children will inherit mostly bat genes. If you want to explain this, of course.
P.S.: And also I remember that eating tobacco (at least cigarettes) is not a healthy thing and was mentioned somewhere as a method to simulate illness and skip school: you'll feel ill and have short-time fever.
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Silly fun that begs you not to analyze it
This movie is no masterpiece- let me get that out of the way- but it is fun. It has the werewolf, Frankenstein's creature, Dracula and vampires, little gremlin vampires, vampire hunters, and a lot of action. It's cheesy fun in the same way you'd enjoy, say, Godzilla vs. Megalon. You can't analyze this movie and say "that's not how that happens" or "that character isn't supposed to be that way" because it's not that kind of movie (and it fails at logic everywhere). Everything about this movie is mediocre, but fun.
From the beginning, you'll notice that Van Helsing is some sort of Simon Belmont instead of an old, kinda weird scientist guy. That's your first cue to not take this movie seriously. His mission is to defeat unholy monsters and his latest mission involves Dracula. He meets up with Anna Valerious, a princess who only knows how to run headfirst into trouble. Her family's been cursed and the only way to lift the curse is to defeat Dracula, hence Van Helsing's mission. They get into a lot of trouble trying to accomplish this mission.
So, the story is so-so and is just an excuse to get some action hero guy to fight Dracula. It's like someone wanted to make Castlevania The Movie but couldn't get the rights. I feel like Anna was poorly written, too.
The acting isn't great but it gets the job done. Sometimes, it feels like they were just having fun with this. The special effects are kind of terrible for a 2004 movie, although anything practical effects was done well- the CGI is what destroys this movie. The action sequences are great fun even if they are a touch unbelievable.
The soundtrack gets the job done. There isn't anything that blows your mind here but there isn't any inappropriate music or sound effects. It all works and just works.
My favorite thing about this movie are the sets. They're great and really provide the atmosphere it should give. They're great homages to the Hammer and Universal films and Dracula's castle looks so much like the typical Castlevania castle.
I feel like this could have been a fun franchise if the CGI had been done better. Needless to say, I had fun with this movie. I feel that if you can enjoy a Godzilla movie (past the original, which is its own genre), you may be able to appreciate this. You need to sit down, say "This is just a movie", devour a bucket of popcorn and soda.