Better Late Than Never: Dark Shadows

            Greetings fellow film geek, my name is TheCinemaChick and I see a lot of movies.  I’ve been fairly quiet as of late, but things happen folks.  I got busy and enrolled for college.  Yeah, I have technically finished my degree, but there’s one class that has been eluding me.  I must face College Algebra once more.  It sucks.

            Now, I have been getting asked one thing a lot lately.  People note that I complain about being broke all the time.  How do I afford to go out to a theater all the time?  Well, I avoid buying snacks and drinks when I go, which saves me some cash.  I usually go during matinee hours.  And oh yes, I am actually a film critic.  That seriously is my job.  I am employed to write about films.  So there you have it.  I’m frugal and I’m a writer.

            I don’t mean to sound so uppity, but people assume I’m a lazy bum who does nothing.  That’s just not the case.  I do many things, most of which I don’t bother talking about because it’s just not that interesting.  Do you really care if I babysit my nephews or if I knit a blanket? 

            Didn’t think so.

            Let’s move on.

            Now, this movie took me weeks to see just because I waited to watch it for a reason.  Butterfly just had a birthday and he wanted to see “Dark Shadows”.  So I took him to see it this past Monday.  We also had Fry with us and when the three of us get together, we usually have a good time.  Plus, I’m a huge Tim Burton fan.  Anything his name is on, I will watch and endorse.  Add Johnny Depp into that mix and I will gladly go see it. 

            That’s why this review has been so difficult to write.

            I really didn’t like “Dark Shadows”.  Yeah, it was based off an old soap opera that ran from 1966-1971, which sort of explains the campiness of the movie, but come on.  Soap operas are melodramatic stories with completely incoherent plots that have a twist added in every episode.  Keep in mind programs like this tend to run for decades.  So let’s take a series that ran for five years and cram it into two hours.  It just can’t be done.  In fact, I’m not sure if this is a remake, reboot or a parody of the original.  I haven’t seen the Jonathan Frid version of this, so I can’t say.

            Now, my main problem is exactly what I mentioned. It’s an entire series of a soap opera shoved into a two hour time frame.  My old Creative Writing professor would call it a “condensed novel”, which is where you cram way too much into too small a space.  I mean, in “Dark Shadows”, they tell the story of Barnabas in his youth, how he became cursed, his imprisonment, his release, how his ancestors are persevering, the failing seafood business, the new love interest, the witch’s jealousy, Barnabas restoring the family’s honor, the child who sees ghosts, the deadbeat dad, awkward sexual scenes all leading up to a really disappointing ending involving a werewolf.

            I want you to think about that for a moment.  I just told you the plot of the entire film.  Trust me, it’s really unimpressive.  I could probably handle a good chunk of this, but having it all in there was just confusing.  They tried to do too much with no success.  Good lord, this movie had like five producers, including Depp and not one of them said, “We should think about streamlining this just a tiny bit.”

            Also, here’s another thing that has been bothering me.  How does Barnabas Collins have relatives when he’s been locked in a coffin for two hundred years?  The movie never once hinted that he had siblings or cousins or anything.  Yet, two centuries later, he still has family.  Did he have children with his lover before they married or was he seeing a mistress?  This is never explained!

            Ok, Tim Burton, let’s chat for a moment.  When making films, you have this awesome talent of creating a world and telling me everything about it.  Good lord, look at the masterpieces that are “Nightmare Before Christmas”, “Corpse Bride” and “9”.  Those movies give me everything in an hour and a half.  “Dark Shadows” told me absolutely nothing except that Barnabas Collins has a stalker.  I went into this expecting a campy, cheesy comedy about a vampire trying to fit in when he awoke in the 1970s, but it was just dry.  There was nothing really exciting about it.

            Johnny Depp looked horrible.  Vampires are supposed to be pale, but he looked like he’d just laid down in a tub of white paint.  Literally, he was whiter than White Out, with badly contoured cheeks.  The makeup was such a huge let down.  It’s worse than Peter Facinelli in “Twilight”.  And I’m sad to say that even though I loathe and abhor “Twilight” the makeup for the Carlisle Cullen character was superior to this.  Everyone else was passable, but Depp was not.  I will admit Helena Bonham Carter looks good as a redhead.

            Another huge letdown for me was the fact that Depp had no chemistry with almost the entire female cast.  Bella Heathcote plays Victoria Winters, who just happens to be Collins’s reincarnated, murdered lover.  When they were onscreen together, they looked awkward, almost like they really didn’t want to be near each other.  For that matter, the love interest is barely in the film.  After her introduction, she just disappears and pops up every now and then.  They do end up together after he turns her into a vampire, but the whole romance angle just doesn’t work at all.

            Even the villain was just bad.  Angelique (played by Eva Green) is a witch, who is apparently immortal who is “in love” with Barnabas.  She calls it love, I call it an obsession.  Basically, Angelique wants Barnabas and has wanted him since the 1700s when she killed his parents, cursed his fiancée then cursed him to be a vampire.  I’m a little skeptical on the whole “vampires are just cursed people” thing.  Anyway, Angelique spends her time on screen being irritating or annoyingly sexual.  I understand she’s a lusty character, but did it have to be that obvious?  And once again, absolutely no chemistry.  Instead of enjoying her as a villain, I just wanted her gone.

            Overall, I was just disappointed.  I expected too much and was severely let down.  And it’s considered a failure.  Then again, it came out right after “The Avengers” so it really never had a chance to be successful.  

            This may be a summer of disappointment.

            So there you go.  “Dark Shadows” isn’t worth your time or money.  The plot is weak, the acting is subpar and its not funny.  Go see “The Avengers” again instead.

            I’m TheCinemaChick and I’m walking on sunshine, whoa oh oh, I’m walking on sunshine!