3.5 stars out of 5
I have vague recollections of Dark Shadows reruns on TV. However, in my head I’m confusing it a bit with horror-host Zacherley. Anyway, I had very little idea what to expect when I saw the new film adaptation. But I knew I would see it, and see it in the theaters. I can’t break my every-Tim-Burton-movie-starting-with-Pee-Wee streak now, can I?
From the trailers, I imagined this would not be very faithful to the show. It appeared to be a goofy, fish-out-of-water tale. Not that I was overly concerned. Burton can certainly do goofy (Mars Attacks!) and I’d trust Johnny Depp in just about anything.
My Wikipedia reading now uncovers that thism in fact, sticks fairly close to the source material. And Burton turns it into a very enjoyable film—almost an excellent one. This Dark Shadows is a unique mix of genuine gothic horror and quite clever comedy. Burton must share credit for this success with screenwriter Seth Grahame-Smith (whose birth name is seemingly Seth Greenberg, so there’s another mystery for you) and the always dependable Depp. Johnny Depp is hilarious in this. And he does it by playing it totally straight—the 17th-century gentleman vampire transported to 1972. In another actor’s hands, Barnabas’s surprised reactions to modern touches might become tiresome after awhile. But Depp makes it funny every single time. A scene in which he recites Steve Miller lyrics had me loudly laughing aloud. I laughed a lot during this movie.
The rest of the cast is pretty solid as well. Michelle Pfeiffer maybe underplays things a bit too much. Eva Green is the sultry villainess and she almost keeps up with Depp. The second coming of Jackie Earle Haley continues, and he gets a few laughs. Newcomer Bella Heathcote has a delicate loveliness and emanates her character’s innocence with a hint of her dark, shadowy back story. Chloë Grace Moretz has entered a post-Hugo awkward phase but she gets some big laughs too as the bored, chomping-at-the-bit teen. Of course Helena Bonham Carter is here, daringly going a little frumpy. Plus you get killer cameos from Christopher Lee, Alice Cooper, and Jonathan Frid himself.
Ultimately, the film gets away from Burton in the last 20 minutes or so. A little too much mayhem, a little too much Disneyland Haunted Mansion. The slightly rushed coda made me wonder if Burton secretly wants to get back together with Lisa Marie. Overall, this is a lot of fun, and yes, I’m adding the original series to my Netflix queue.
I wish Tim Burton would stop doing remakes. Like all the ones he’s done, you need to be a hard core Burton Fan, and not be a fan of the original source material to really enjoy the film. For me, this is exactly like when Barry Sonnenfeld remade ‘The Wild, Wild, West”, it had the basic window dressing of the original show, but it was really all about Will Smith playing James West reconfigured into essentially the same character he’d been running into the ground in all his other movies. They also made the mistake of trying to make it a slapstick comedy, when the original only used humor sparingly. Burton does the same thing with Johnny Depp here. The only consolation is, they might release the true Dark Shadows movie(House of Dark Shadows) on Blu-Ray now – I will definitely be purchasing THAT one!.
Reboots are often hard to swallow. I have a friend who is furious at the Mission: Impossible movie series (while I never watched the show so find those movies wildly entertaining, Cruise’s nuttiness be damned). Wild Wild West was a mess–dare I say MIB III looks promising? And yes, when they turn non-comedies into comedies (or self-aware comedies) it can be a real drag to devoted fans. I have to say, I thought this was going to be MUCH more of a comedy–i was pleased to be genuinely frightened a few times.
Burton remakes his own Frankenweenie next and doesn’t have anything listed after that, so yes, let’s hope for something wholly original.