“DARK SHADOWS” My rating: C (Opening wide on May 11)
113 minutes | MPAA rating: PG-13
You can’t expect Johnny Depp to do everything.
He’s a very fine actor, wildly creative and capable of putting a singular spin on just about any character that comes his way, from Lewis Carroll’s Mad Hatter to the tragicomic Edward Scissorhand.
But he can’t take an indifferent piece of writing or a half-assed idea and, through sheer will power, transform it into gold. Surely we have at least learned that from three “Pirates of the Caribbean” sequels.
(I’m talking here of esthetics. When it comes to actual gold – i.e., the generating of wealth – Depp’s mere presence in a film practically guarantees its financial success.)
Artistically, though, there’re only so many miracles that one man – even a very talented man — can pull off in the face of overwhelming mediocrity.
Lately, Depp has been wasting his great talents trying to give life to meritless films. The most recent of these is “Dark Shadows,” an updating of the late-‘60s horror-themed daytime soap opera.
The film’s trailer is promising. Here’s a white-skinned, black-haired Depp as Barnabus Collins, the series’ conflicted vampire hero, who after 200 years in a buried coffin is having a hard time adapting to modern life (in this case the early 1970s). Like the aforementioned Mr. Scissorhand, he’s both cute and creepy.
Walking into a room and encountering a TV set on which a young woman is singing, Barnabus exclaims “What sorcery is this?” and immediately begins yanking wiring out of the back of the set, commanding: “Reveal yourself, tiny songstress!”
When his great-great-great niece asks “Are you stoned or something?,” he replies: “They tried stoning me, my dear. It did not work.”
Watching the trailer, I found myself looking forward to the movie. After all, here’s the dynamic duo of director Tim Burton and star Johnny Depp spoofing the vampire genre. Fun, yes?
Except it turns out that every genuinely amusing moment in “Dark Shadows” is used in the trailer.
The film itself is a huge dead whale of a yarn, plot heavy and pleasure poor, which wastes a strong cast and lumbers from one not-particularly-interesting scene to the next like a blind elephant bumping its way through a bamboo forest.
As a comedy it’s weak and indifferent. As drama it’s inept. In fact, it suffers from the meandering lack of focus that characterizes TV soap opera where the prime directive is to drag things out as long as possible. There’s no subtext. Hell, there’s barely text.
The story kicks off in Colonial times with Barnabus, heir to a fishing and shipping fortune, falling for sweet young thing Josette (Bella Heathcote, exhibiting all the personality of a celery stalk), thus alienating the servant girl Angelique (Eva Green) with whom he has had a thing.
Angelique practices witchcraft and entices Josette to kill herself while turning Barnabus into a vampire. Now an outcast from humanity, he is captured by angry locals and buried alive, emerging 200 years later when construction workers unearth his coffin.
Returning to his palatial home, Collinwood, he finds it in deep decline. His distant relatives, the siblings Elizabeth and Roger (Michelle Pfeiffer, Johnny Lee Miller) and their respective children – the rebellious Carolyn (Chloe Grace Moretz) and the autistic David (Gulliver McGrath) – live in near poverty. The Collins family’s fishing business has been driven into the ground by a competing company run by Angelique, whose sorcery has allowed her to retain her youth.
Now the newly revived Barnabus must cope with the predatory Angelique (who wants to resume their affair) and his attraction to his family’s governess, who bears an uncanny resemblance to his beloved Josette (and is played by the same colorless actress). Meanwhile he dallies with the eccentric psychiatrist (Helena Bonham Carter) who is on hand to treat young David.
None of this is remotely compelling or even clever. You can see Depp trying — God how he tries! He obviously has studied the original vampire movie “Nosferatu” and has patterned Barnabus’ movements and elongated fingers on the undead villain of that silent epic. But the material consistently lets him down.
Moreover, any movie that can make young Miss Moretz (of “Kick-Ass” and “Let Me In”) boring has much to apologize for. Pfeiffer and Miller have thankless straightman roles. Jackie Earle Haley has a moment or two as the family’s sole servant, but even he is left holding an empty bag. Green is sexy enough, but Angelique’s wickedness is just so much posturing.
The only level on which “Dark Shadows” succeeds is that of art direction. The Collinswood mansion is a marvelous edifice of creepy gables and carved woodwork, replete with secret doors and passages.
All you can do is stare at the sets and wish they were inhabited.
| Robert W. Butler
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