Maybe I'd enjoy shuffleboard better

Rating: Null/10 (22 November 1999)

Hey, perhaps I'm just too jaded from watching films but I always thought that the story and acting were important parts of a "good" movie. Johnny Depp, who has certainly demonstrated competent acting abilities elsewhere, has clearly never watched any British television. His accent is so poor and inconsistent that it became a blaring beacon of the mediocre talents of Tim Burton and what he accepts as adequate. That's right folks, Tim is no master. He has colorful disparate visions that he translates into film but couldn't tell a story properly if his career depended on it. Obviously it doesn't. People are satisfied now with eye candy scenes thrown together without a clearheaded arrow of cause and effect. Burton knows what he wants things to look like, he know how he intends to end his films. All of the stuff in the middle is filler. He doesn't understand how to generate suspense, he fails to catch the lack of chemistry between Depp and Ricci (why is she in this movie?), and relies on a awkward and complicated soliloquy from a key character to bring us all up to speed before ending this film since he's unable to weave it into the progress of the story.
So bring on the shuffleboard, at least I can see where one action logically leads to the next, and see this movie at a matinee to increase it's meager value.