Missy Lorelei is unimpressed by the latest Burton/Depp film.
Hopes were high for this, the latest collaboration between Burton and his favourite leading man Depp but, oh boy, Ed Wood it ain’t.
With a cheesy narration that excels in taking the “too dumb to just watch” audience by the hand, underused characters (Bonham-Carter’s Betty Friedan/Bette Davis hybrid Dr Julia Hoffman steals most scenes, despite being given little to work with) and gratuitous exposition at every turn, this adaptation of the US 60s/70s TV melodrama is thin, lowest common denominator stuff.
Barnabus Rudge, cursed by his thwarted lover Angelique (a blow-up doll of the kooky school played dreadfully by Eva Green) to be turned into a vampire and buried (kinda) alive for over one hundred years, escapes and returns to his crumbling ancestral home in Collinsport to settle a score. Trouble is, it’s the permissive 70s and- whaddya know- he’s a (big) fish out of water…
Not even kitsch enough to be bad, all subtlety having long since gone, we instead get a morally dubious leading man, predictably dysfunctional family (that Elizabeth, the matriarch played by Michelle Pfeiffer, is into macramé should be a comic highlight tells you how poor the script is) and pointless storyline. Some actors such as Johnny Lee Miller and Chloe Grace Moretz (dodgy Lolita subplot there) sleepwalk through underwritten roles and you wonder why they showed up at all.
The Woody Allen effect is also in play here (how the anaemic Rudge can get so many ladies is a mystery) and there is no chemistry between him and new love interest Victoria (a too young, bland Bella Heathcote) or indeed witchy “temptress” Green. It all seems like a vehicle for the once great Depp’s vanity which is odd, given past glories.
At two hours, patience is stretched- Dark Shadows is a popcorn film with no flavour, a witless vacuous glossy mess. The final nail in the coffin of Burton’s career? Let’s hope not.
Michelle Pfeiffer’s strangely immobile face says it all: disastrous.
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