Bela Lugosi's Dead

Rating: Null/10 (5 September 2012)

Tim Burton is not as seriously committed as I'd like, someone with an intuitive grasp for life. Or rather, he does it badly when he tries to be (serious). And that is reflected in the long arcs of his films (right down to his produced Nightmare), almost without exception poor and slapdash. He does not have what it takes to sustain story-motion, so we simply move in his films from one visual contraption to the next. He has two talents: one is to build those contraptions, and his other gift is for comedy, both short-term effects. Ed Wood is his best, because it is about his own experience and love of doing what he does, and having ghoulish fun irrespective of contraptions working or not. That was the long arc.
This is business as usual. It's one of his most poorly written, to the point that a long arc is practically nonexistent. And it goes to illustrate why he doesn't get it. He builds characters the way he builds an effect, appealing to look at and with a few interesting tics. In order for the overall world to have convincing motion though, you have to understand the build of forces that move it, gravity instead of simply showing the fall.
And we are simply unsure here of the reach of what forces the characters can leverage inside the world of the film. One is revealed at the last moment to be a werewolf, useless. Our witch is a shrewd actress for the entire film, and it's out of character for her to step out of character at the crucial moment. The vampire can hypnotize. M'kay.
The contraption is built from parts that have appealing dissonance, vampire lore + Nixon's Woodstock America + the fishing business. And in short spurts, the comedy is the best he has done in a long time.
It's a lot of fun to watch this tinkertoy mimic motion for a minute, but it doesn't go anywhere. There is no mechanism.
There is a scene with Johnny Depp as the ancient vampire accidentally hitting random keys in a synth that make goofy sounds that counterpoint his mournful ruminations. Burton works a bit like this. He can tinker with sound, but he has no clue how to synthesize.
And it's a shame about Depp, because he has also segued in that complacent Burton-mode of simply tinkering a bit with a persona, and he can support so much more.