Unless you are a fan of Johnny Depp and/or Michelle Pfeiffer, Eva Green, Helena Bonham Carter and/or Tim Burton you will have a hard time sitting through this almost 2 hour film of
“Dark Shadows”. Having never seen the original TV show I don’t know
whether this is based on that or just taking the original characters and
running with their names but if it is suppose to be a take off or camp
it fails.

I
am a big fan of Johnny Depp but I find most of the films he has made
with Tim Burton, except, maybe, “Sweeney Todd” to be uninteresting. The
screenplay for “Dark Shadows” was written by Seth Grahame-Smith who
didn’t seem to know what he was doing. At times I thought I was watching
“Wuthering Heights” or a Daphne Du Maurier novel based film. At other
times I wasn’t sure if it was Eva Green on the screen or if Burton had
superimposed shots of Meryl Streep from “Death Becomes Her”, especially
near the end. When Bella Heathcote appeared on screen as Victoria the
part screamed for Christine Ricci.

As
much as I love Michelle Pfeiffer, and there is nothing wrong with her
performance here and she still looks stunning, Burton should have taken
some of her screen time or any of the other actors and had, at least,
one scene between Depp and Alice Cooper. Why was he in the film?

The
characters Depp has played over the years such as Ed Wood,
Scissorhands, his very successful Jack Sparrow films, has brought him
fame, awards and money but I would like to see him get away from the
make up roles and get back to movies like “Chocolat”, “What’s Eating
Gilbert Grape”, “Donnie Brasco” and “Benny and Joon” where he did the
acting and not his makeup and costumes like he does here.

Danny
Elfman’s selection of music is right on and the production design of
Collinwood Manor is more interesting than the film itself.

Stay
for credits at the end of the film and take a count of how many people
were involved with this film which will boggle your mind.

One last thought--maybe it is time to give vampires, and werewolves, a rest from the screen.