stiff

Rating: 1/10 (23 July 2009)

Burton cranks up the machine again to poop out this formulaic product ...and there it sits. It cost me nada to watch and I still couldn't bear more than about half an hour. Developments are non-existent (The sole plot point is the title). There needed to be some attitude to the material, a concept...there is none. The tone is forthright. Characters just stand around, repeatedly explaining how very little is going on; stretching things thinner and thinner, until you're looking at 100 percent concentrated boredom. Danny Elfman's songs are half-hearted musicalizations of the lackluster narrative points.
Most of Burton's favorite visuals get recycled again. He clearly stopped thinking after he penned a gag for each scene, throughout the whole movie. That's just not good enough. His first idea is almost always cribbed from somewhere else, and has been weakened over a century to the point of cliché, by the time he finds it and shouts "Eureeka!" in complete obliviousness. Burton should sit down with a textbook that explains how narratives work, before he ever touches a camera again.