Fancy costumes and set; no story at all

Rating: 4/10 (15 October 2017)

I wanted to like this film so much but it suffers from so much clutter. The only character that gets enough screen time is Barnabus and while the story is supposed to focus on some kind of love developing between he and Victoria she gets very little developmental. Many characters are wasted - such as Roger and Dr. Hoffman - and whether intentional or not given the soap opera background the acting was far too over the top by actors that are supposed to be amazing, ie Depp and Pfeiffer. It's sad when the children are the only ones who turn out a good performance though I must say Eva Green didn't disappoint. It's just too bad that her decent performance is muddled with ridiculous attempts at being comedic such as the sex scene with Barnabus. Going along with that it seems as if Burton only made Barnabus into a killing and screwing machine (what was the purpose of the bj the doc gave him again?) whose intent to see his family thrive and his curser squirm was just an afterthought rather than a driving force. Everything in this film felt so misplaced and rushed. The comedic timing was awful. The only reason I'm not dropping a point off my rating is because the end fight was actually entertaining (though we had to suffer to get to it) and the technical aspects were decent. After having Victoria willing to kill herself for the vampire we never actually saw her fall in love with (rush, rush, rush) and then taken over by the ghost of Barnabus' old love I wanted to just drop the rating even lower for the sheer stupidity, but I'm being fair here. If only this film were more fair to its audience.