DARK SHADOWS

Reviewed by Patrick Gibbs

GRADE: B

Johnny Depp, Eve Green, Michelle Pfeifer, Bella Heathcoate, Chloe Grace Moretz,

Johnny Lee Miller

Based on the television series created by Dan Curtis

Screen Story by Seth Grahame -Smith and John August

Screenplay by Seth Grahame-Smith

Directed by Tim Burton

If you pay go to see a Tim Burton film, you pretty much know exactly what you are going to get. Sometimes you get a little bit more (Ed Wood, Big Fish) and sometimes you get a lot less (Planet of The Apes, Sleepy Hollow, Mars Attacks!). The bad news about Dark Shadows is that it is nothing more than a very average Tim Burton film. The good news is it's also nothing less.

In 1752, Joshua and Naomi Collins sail from Liverpool, England to North America. Their son, Barnabas, grows up to be played by super mega star Johnny Depp, who has achieved enormous popularity and raves for the stunning versatility he shows in finding ways to play every character as a variation on Jack Sparrow. The adult Barnabas is a wealthy playboy in Collinsport, Maine, and the master of Collinwood Manor. Like most playboys, Barnabas gets around. Unlike most, he has the misfortune of doing so with a servant who also happens to be a witch. Angelique Bouchard (played by Eva Green), is more than a little upset when Barnabas spurns her for the lovely Josette. She responds by killing his parents, cursing his family and causing all of them, to leap to their deaths from a nearby cliff. Finally, she turns Barnabas into a vampire and buries him alive in a chained-coffin in the woods.

200 years later in 1972, Barnabas is accidentally freed from his coffin by a group of construction workers, sucks them dry of their blood and makes his way back to Collinwood Manor where he finds his once-magnificent mansion in ruin. The manor is currently occupied by Barnabas' descendants, who are in a bit of a financial rut and are dysfunctional in exactly the way you would expect a family to be in a Tim Burton film. The teenage girl, Carolyn (Chloe Grace Moretz) is moody, rebellious and oversexed; the young boy, David (Gulliver McGrath) claims the ghost of his dead mother speaks to him, and the boy's father, Roger (Johnny Lee Miller) is a womanizing cad who gives little attention to his son. His sister Elizabeth (Michelle Pfieffer) the of the family, is saddled with the daunting task of saving the manor from being taking away from them, and when Barnabas suddenly appears, talking of a buried treasure, she decides to look past his eccentric ways and hide his status as a vampire in hopes that he can restore the once proud family to their former glory.

Also living with the family are Dr. Julia Hoffman (Helena Bonham Carter), a family therapist, and Victoria Winters (Bella Heathcoate), and beautiful young nanny who draws the attention and affections of Barnabas. But problems arise when an old enemy appears to foil the vampire's plans to raise his family name from the dead.

All of this is pretty by the numbers and predictable – this harkens back to Burton's early days, in particular Beetlejuice. But it's well paced and nicely acted, with the ever reliable Depp (The Tourist notwithstanding) injecting a lot of life into his death, and Pfieffer displaying a subtle strength and charm that reminds us why she once a top star. Bonham Carter is a regular fixture of Burton's films, and for the most part a welcome one (if he has to cast his current love in every movie, thanks heavens he is now married to an accomplished and versatile actress instead instead of Lisa Marie, who was given ample opportunity to show of both of her major assets in a number of Burton films but never actually gave anything resembling a performance.). Unfortunately, Bonham Carter's character is very hit and miss, and provides some of the films highs, but also quite literally it's biggest low.

Eva Green, as the vengeful witch, Angelique, is clearly having a great time in her role, playing it to the hilt, and is quite entertaining. But ultimately the movie (big surprise) rests on Burton and Depp, and fortunately this is a more successful pairing of the happy couple than the wildly disjointed Alice In Wonderland, which if we are being honest was just a half baked remake of Hook that gave Depp an excuse to show us what it would be like if he stuck all of his previous film roles in a blender along with Jim Ccarrey and hit “puree.” (In fairness, I must point out that Alice was a huge hit and this movie is unlikely to approach its box office gross.). But Dark Shadows succeeds where that film failed, primarily for the reason that it follows the point of view of the strange outsider, Barnabas, which comes naturally to Burton and to Depp. It's when they are forced to portray normal people that both become out of their depth.

The film has a number of clever and amusing moments, too many of which, unfortunately, are seen in the trailers, but like the series on which it was based, it was it's darkly serious side as well. It's more violent than most audiences may expect, and the sexual content is surprisingly strong (in particular a sequence with Depp and Bonham Carter that will force many a squirming parent to answer the question “What was she doing to him?”) But the mixture works overall, never quite soaring as high as it would like but certainly staying in the air.

Ultimately, once again, this is a Tim Burton film, and your ability to enjoy depends on how you feel about that. As someone who alternately loves and hates that, in the end, I was decidedly entertained but not overjoyed.

Dark Shadows is rated PG-13 for violence, sex, profanity, vulgarity and smoking.