Funny and such, but...

Rating: 6/10 (26 July 2012)

So here comes another dish made with the Burton-Depp recipe, and this time it is a new adaptation of a TV-series with the same name from 1966. I have not seen the original series, so I have no idea of how true this movie is to its source, and therefore I saw it only for the movie it was. It's a Gothic vampire-story that revolves around Barnabas Collins, a rich, young man who's the son of a wealthy merchant and lives in Collingwood Manor in the year of 1752. He has an affair with a servant girl (played by Eva Green) but it is all physical for him and he soon leaves her for a girl he truly loves. Bad move, since the servant girl is also a witch. She proceeds to kill his parents, kill his love, and then she curses him to an eternal life as a vampire and then locks him in a coffin! Damn! After 300 years he finally gets out and decides to return to Collinwood manor and resume his life together with the left-overs of the Barnabas family. He quickly discovers however, that in 1972 things are very, very different, and he struggles to fit in in modern society. And as that was not enough, the servant girl has also hung around due to her magic, and under different aliases she has become the local community's biggest fish and has on her own driven the Collins family to the edge of bankruptcy. Barnabas really chose the right girl to fool around with, didn't he? I should begin to say that I did enjoy the film, however I still feel that it raises a cloud of doubt whether Tim Burton's film-making abilities are still up to par. After the, in my opinion, minor disaster of Alice in Wonderland Burton needed to follow up with at strong piece to convince us that he still has what it takes to deliver the special kind of magic he is known for. I do not feel that Dark Shadows accomplishes that. It feels in many ways confused, unfocused and sometimes downright sloppy.
However, let's start with the good stuff. This movie is funny, like really funny. Most jokes centers around the cultural clashes between Barnabas 18th century's manner and the wilderness of the 1970:s. We get the scenes were he interacts with modern technology, starts to appreciate modern music and tries to comprehend the strange ideals people have. This kind of humor could easily have become cheap and tiresome, but somehow this movie makes it work all the way. The acting is overall great. Johnny Depp is as solid as always, and Eva Green is great as the villain (she has a thing for playing evil sorceresses). One of my favorite performances though has to be Michelle Pfeiffers portrayal as the current matriarch of the Collins family. She desperately tries to keep the Collins family together and going, and she has harsh and effective way that makes her easy to like. It's also fun too see some quick cameos from Christopher Lee and Tom Savini (very short, keep your eyes open). The 70's music is also great and fits very well to the visual. Hell, they even manage to integrate a creepy Alice Cooper-ballad to a romantic scene.
One of the major downsides with this movie is how it seems to be confused on what kind of film it wants to be. It goes from being a half-serious comedy to a whacked out mindflip and back. It changes between lighthearted to really dark in a way that just doesn't mesh to me. Also, the script can be really sloppy at times, and the focus is not always were it should be at times. This is best shown in the romance between Barnabas and Victoria Winters (played by Bella Heathcote). It is supposed to be very central to the story, but it is showed to the sidelines and is not expanded very much. Instead we get a lot of thrown in stuff that steals focus from the film. There is a lot of scenes that does nothing for the story and just comes off as pointless, and you can't but wonder why they did not replace these scenes with... you know, point.
All in all a mixed bag. Compared to movies like Beetlejuice, Edward Scissorhands and even later stuff like Sweeney Todd it doesn't pack a similar punch. But dammit Burton, I know you CAN make movies. Maybe you need do refresh yourself, give someone else than Depp a go, bring more focus to your stories. I'm still a fan an excitingly awaits your next work.