"Dark Shadows"

Dark Shadows

Rated PG-13

1 Hour 43 Minutes

Starring

Johnny Depp

Michelle Pfeiffer

Helena Bonham Carter

Eva Green

Belle Heathcote

Chloe Grace Moretz

Jackie Earle Haley

Storyline

An imprisoned vampire, Barnabas Collins, is set free and returns to his ancestral home, where his dysfunctional descendants are in need of his protection. Remake of a cult classic TV soap.

Rotten Tomatoes Grade

41%

"The visuals are top notch but Tim Burton never finds a consistent rhythm, mixing campy jokes and gothic spookiness with less success than other Johnny Depp collaborations."

My Grade

C-

**spoiler alert**

I've never seen the original show, as it was a tad bit before my time. I know it's a cult classic and I know a lot of people had issues with Tim Burton remaking it into a feature length film. I think they had a good reason to feel this way. The movie shows that there was a lot of source material in the show and they attempted to pack a lot in to the film. It's a very busy movie yet at the same time not much really goes on, and it never really takes off into anything special. This is the eighth collaboration between Burton and Oscar nominee Johnny Depp (Sweeney Todd, Sleepy Hollow) and I think I have to finally cave in and say...enough is enough. They obviously work well together, that goes without saying, but it's growing very tiresome now.

The movie is all over the place with story and characters. It has to much to incoporate into a less then 2 hour movie. I feel like they didn't do the original characters any justice and made them all a little to campy and silly. This was kind of like the Brady Bunch movie mixed with maybe the Adams Family movie. They tried to make a funny story out of it but it came off as almost uncomfortable. Some of the characters were clearly meant to be major parts of the story but were just left on the sidelines most of the time. Take the Vicki character. Supposed to be the love interest for Barnabus but with the excpetion of the beginning of the film, she only pops up for a minute or two. Then they decide to give her a back story almost at the end of the film and I was like "Um, what?!"Same with Chloe Moretz character. There's no sign for the whole movie that she's a werewolf, but at the very end...she turns into one. And has the cheesiest line in the movie, "Woof". I'm sure this is what her character was in the show, but come on, that was ages ago, a lot of today's youth won't know this.

None of the performances were all that engaging. Usually Burton has a knack for crafting unique, twisted, quirky performances from his actors, but not this time. His wife, Oscar nominee Helena Bonham Carter (The King's Speech, Harry Potter series) is somwhere between "normal" and "strange" and that doesn't work well with her. She plays creepy very well, but she wasn't put to good use here. Depp is a very reliable actor, but even he could not save this film. He does character work better than most people, but this particular character was a lame blend of Jack Sparrow and maybe Sweeney Todd. This version of Barnabus was not fun, cool or entertaining.

The whole movie was a few notches below the line of being just mediocre for me. I know this isn't a well written review, that could be do in part to the fact that I'm in a bad mood today. But this movie was just so generic and boring. It didn't have the energy I was hoping it would have in it's story and characters. Now the movie looked incredible. Beautifully dark and haunting set pieces. Perfect costuming. Realistic looking visual effects. It nailed the techinal side of the film. But the pieces of the puzzle did not come together neatly because of it's weak story and un charasmatic performances. It was dull. Maybe that means I'm dull...you be the judge. Be a hater, I don't care. :-)