Chix Chat on Film Review: Some time spent with a vamp.

Rating: 5/10 (12 May 2012)

When I originally saw the trailer for Dark Shadows, my first thought was why would Tim Burton remake this classic supernatural television series drama about a tormented vampire named Barnabas Collins (Johnny Depp) into a comedy? My second thought was this is going to suck, no pun intended. Turns out it wasn't really a comedy as much as it was a comedic take on the Barnabas situation. It was actually fairly masterfully done keeping the tone of the film balanced between comedy and creepy, although the funniest comedic dialogue was in the trailer. I was pretty young when the series aired on television, but I did recognize the names of most of the characters and their demeanors, so the film did stay pretty much true to the Elizabeth Collins (Michele Pfeiffer) persona of a cold and calculating woman putting her own interests first. I don't recall much about her daughter Carolyn Stoddard (Chloe Grace Moretz), but I was more fascinated by Ms. Moretz than her role. Did I miss the time warp memo? First of all wasn't she like ten in Hugo and wasn't that just last year and now she's fifteen. Speaking of a time warp, how is it that Alice Cooper looked just as old in 1972 as he does today? And for comedy sake the Alice Cooper being a woman joke is just old, as is the balls joke, and now I just feel like I'm ranting. So here's the thing, I wanted to see a wildly original film that would be fun and memorable, and it just didn't turn out that way. There were the obvious Beetlejuice moments, and there were moments that the story was so stalled that I almost dozed off. I will say though that the recreation of 1972 was pretty cool, as an eleven year old I found the psychedelic age fascinating and hearing the Curtis Mayfield Superfly soundtrack as a backdrop to that film with the name prominently displayed on the small town movie marquee totally took me back. Unfortunately, that same type of fond memory was not the end result from viewing Dark Shadows, even with Johnny Depp and Michelle Pfeiffer leading the cast, it just fell short. Angelique (Eva Green) was supposed to be a super villain and I found nothing about her or her vendetta to be at all interesting, the most interesting character was Willie (Jackie Earle Haley), whose apathy was probably what I could relate to most, with that I give this film an amber light, only because of my Superfly moment.