Fans of the TV show beware. Burton fans beware. Depp fans, he's not bad!

Rating: 6/10 (16 May 2012)

Dark Shadows (2012) A part spoof, part earnest (oddly) vampire movie with only a few of the twists and visual effects you'd expect from director Tim Burton. The year? 1971. The source? American television.
Mostly there's Johnny Depp, who again lifts his movie into something watchable. Depp's deadpan humor, with an old school British accent, is killer. He's a vampire, for sure (you can't see him in reflections, and he's not so good with sunlight) but he's got justice on his side, and a sense of family loyalty that goes beyond the Corleone flavor. He broods. He means well.
When Depp's character, Barnabas Collins, gets a second chance to win back his honor and his love, it's in coastal Maine, where his nemesis, a centuries old witch, runs the competing fishing cannery. Yes, there's some silliness here, but in movie form it's too grandiose. This is totally t.v. material and here it doesn't get funny or campy or weird enough to work.
There are some short scenes that are hilarious, like the lines about "Love Story" (which young viewers won't get) or when Collins tries to learn about contemporary life from some pretty convincing second-rate hippies. Sometimes it's a bit of special effects overkill with creatures coming to life from the woodwork of the old house, or with Helena Bonham Carter at something less than her best as a cookey psychoanalyst. (To be sure, when Carter is not her best, she's still pretty good.) Michelle Pfeiffer is a wonderful matriarch, and the evil witch is played with good bad energy by Eva Green.
The big problem? This is a Tim Burton movie that lacks the originality of something like "Edward Scissorhands." I mean, what was he thinking? Still, for pure mindless fun, especially if you don't know the t.v. show, it might be worth a drive-in kind of night out.