The Tonnina here to sort of review Dark Shadows...
I say sort of because, well... I'm just going to do a pros and cons list of the movie... So SPOILERS!!! Obviously I'm going to talk about the film so if you haven't seen it, don't read this, unless you want to spoil the flick. I'm going to start with what I had to say on Trailer Park about this movie...
"I'm pretty sure just about everyone in Trailer Park says that this movie is a groaner... they may not want to acknowledge it's existence, but it does exist. I never watched the TV show but I do fancy Johnny Depp and Tim Burton. I'm also a fan of Chloe Moretz (she was Hit Girl) I may not see this movie in theaters because I might be the only one in my house who wants to see it, but that's what netflix is for right?! I will say that I'm not really a fan of this particular trailer for it though... It makes the movie seem so dull and lifeless... Or maybe that's just a tiny bit of Josh rubbing off on me!"
Well I saw it in theaters with my Ma and sister and my old co-worker... I wasn't even planning on seeing it, my Ma was just like "let's go!" so we went and now here's my list...
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| She's a very pretty kid... She's going places! |
- Chloe Moretz and Johnny Depp. I like both of these actors... I really REALLY enjoyed Chloe as Hit Girl and had high hopes she would be just as awesome in this movie... She plays Carolyn the 15 year old daughter of Elizabeth. I really REALLY liked her performance... until... well we will get to that in the cons. Johnny was great. My husband thought, "This is just Capt Jack as a vampire" but honestly, it's not even close to Capt Jack... it's more like Edward Scissorhands meets Victor Van Dort from Corpse Bride. He's a gentleman... most of the time. It's enjoyable to see his character learn to "live" in the 70's a whole 200 years after he was buried. I liked what Johnny Depp's character, Barnabas does in the movie... for the most part.
- It has a handful of laughs. Most of the funnies from this flick are the words that come out of Barnabas' mouth... like "Birthing Hips"; when he learns Carolyn is 15, he states "And without a husband! Put those birthing hips to good use or your uterus is going to shrivel up and die!" Pretty cute and worth a ha-ha. Most of the film, however isn't that funny.
- Helena Bonham Carter. In most of her roles she's a crazy person... in this film, she's really great... I think that her character was my absolute favorite. The Doctor had no flaws in character (well almost no flaws, I mean she did try to become a vampire by taking Barnabas' blood... and in the end it worked!) She was witty, funny, and REAL. I liked her a lot. It's a shame she had to die!!
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| I also liked the Doctor's outfits... She was really great! |
Cons.
- Carolyn is a fucking werewolf. EXCUSE ME?! I'm so mad about this I could spit. In the 1960's tv show Carolyn is actually Barnabas' spy and never EVER a werewolf. I mean she's not even a Collins' in the old tv show! Now I've never seen the show(s) but a little bit of research can go a long LONG way. Wanna know my main issue with this? It's fucking Twilight ripoffs... Carolyn NEVER had to be a werewolf. She could have just been a normal rebellious 15 year old. It wasn't necessary for the plot. Hell it happens at the end of the damn movie! It's not worth it. This was just Tim Burton trying his damnedest to get on the Twilight train of teenagers. NOT WORTH IT TIMMY!
- The "special effects". Okay, I'll give the ghosts to ya. Those were pretty cool. The rats and the seagulls in the canning plant and the rat in the secret hallway? STUPID. It looked like something out of 1991... LAME!!! And I don't get why you have to have blood ALL OVER Barnabas' mouth every time he bites someone. It's not realistic... oh yeah I know vampires aren't real, but blood is and just from a tiny bite that much blood? No not happening... Also get your damn bite marks right. Spacing people, SPACING!!! The cuspid teeth are the ones that get long and sharp on a vampire... they are teeth numbers 6 and 11... that means there are four teeth in between them... So please don't make it look like someone got poked in the neck with a two pronged fork... Get some spacing in there!!!!
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| Open wide!! |
- How Adult this film was. It was rated PG-13... But I was a little uncomfortable that my 16 year old sister was watching it with us... I mean there is Vampire on Witch sex and it is violent. Yeah my sister knows what sex is, most teens do, but it's like borderline softcore porn... I didn't think it had to be that... *shudders* blech. It just wasn't a good scene. I HOPE that most parents didn't bring their 8 year olds to see this movie... the sex scenes (there's more than one!!) were intense, the blood is all over the place, the ghosts are not scary, but might plague a child who has an over active imagination. It also has drug use in it... there's pot smoking, of course I mean this is the 1970's. It's not essential to the story, but it's part of life back then. I hope that the kids know that those drugs are not legal and they shouldn't use them... oh listen to me, turning into an after school special.
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| Above the Influence... The More you know... Just say No to drugs! |
- It wasn't that funny. It really wasn't... It was a lot of talking... Business talk and sex talk... A little bit of love talk and then like a tiny amount of funny talk. The jokes are alright, I mentioned one up in Pros. I feel like it could have done better in the "jokes" department... Pretty much all the funny parts are in the various trailers. I have the feeling the hypnosis deal was supposed to be funnier than it was. It was silly the first time Barnabas does it because he's using it on Willie Loomis the servant and Willie is smashed... DRUNK. But that's the only reason it's funny.
- Eva Green. UGH. She's toooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo skinny. And I'm not just saying that cause I'm a chunky gal. She looks like she may have blown away if the wind picked up. She is so thin she looks sickly. I don't like the character; I'm not supposed to, she's the villain. I hate all of her scenes... She may be a good actress, I don't know I've only seen her act in two movies, this and the Golden Compass and I don't recall her character in that film. I don't like her face, I don't like her body. I think it has something to do with how much she looks like Kristin "I have no emotions" Stewart and the FACT that her lips are too wide for her face. She's frightfully thin... We should set up a fund to feed the starving actresses... Send her some cheeseburgers!
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| This photo's obviously shopped but she really is too thin. |
- I hate the portrayal of witches in this film. I wish they would have made it more clear that she was using BLACK magic and that she was using VOODOO and not just your average every day witch. Yeah Barnabas is all "She's working for the Devil!" but most people think that all witches are working for the devil... they aren't, at least none of the witches I know aren't. It's rude and a little religiously insensitive.
- The blood transfusion. Now that I've taken Bio class I know that our red bone marrow produces new blood cells every day, hell yours is doing it right now! Each red blood cell lives for about 28 to 31 days, so a month... If Barnabas completely removed his blood and replaced it with a human's blood, he'd only be human for a month before his red bone marrow would completely replace the human blood with vampire blood... Wait a tic, do vampires even have blood?
- The ending. OH COME THE FUCK ON! Here's another Twilight rip off. Let's make him bite her and turn her into a vampire!!! I can't believe this BULL SHIT! It makes me mad, now I'm not sure if that's how the series went in the 1960's or not, but it still angers me. I don't see what is wrong with him and "Victoria" living their lives together while he never get's old... it's sad, but at least she's not a vampire! At least it doesn't rip off a shit movie!!
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| How I felt typing all this out... |
Well that about wraps it up... my pros and cons of this movie... Honestly I didn't really like it. You don't have to agree with me but you can leave me comments! Cheers!!
EDIT I'd just like to add, I HATE Twilight... I'm not sure if I made that clear or not... I don't want it to sound like I'm mad that Twilight doesn't get recognition or something... that is one awful series and I'm not saying that I'm upset Dark Shadows shares similarities; I'm upset Twilight exists and causes other films to think "We can only be successful if our movie has vampires AND werewolves in it!"
But she would get old and die relatively soon. And Twilight ripped Dark Shadows off not the other way around. =)
ReplyDeleteThis movie ended a lot better than the first 1970 film spinoff "House of Dark Shadows" which had the original actors and sets from the still-active series, but they were stupid enough to have Barnabas killed at the end by the nanny's personality-free boyfriend whom she obviously wasn't interested in, via the boring stake through the heart (cowardly thrust through the back).
That movie killed the series. People were furious that Barnabas was considered the bad guy when at least he had a personality while the "hero" only really had a pulse.
You are right about Eva needing to eat. Do you know who should have played Angelique? The original Lana Parker from the TV series! She's better looking now than she was back then and better looking than all other actresses I know of. And she can still pull off that evil laugh. Search for that on YouTube. You won't be sorry.
The jokes not funny? They were inside jokes except for "Come out tiny songstress" which will make cinematic history as a cool movie moment. You had to have watched at least enough of the series to get the gist. Example: "My name is Maggie Evans...I mean Victoria Winters". That was funny to those who remember how the original actresses kept quitting when they got pregnant and were replaced and the names of the nanny changed around and...what a mess.
In fact, Barnabas was invented because the actress who played Roger's evil ex-wife Laura got pregnant. When the screenwriters had to finish her off in episode 191 inside a burning fishing hut on the edge of the estate by the ocean, they needed an entirely new plot line that would keep people on the edge of their seats. They decided it would be that two crooks would blackmail Elizabeth who thinks she killed her husband and buried him in the basement 18 years before. One crook gets bored trying to blackmail Elizabeth and comes up with the idea that the coffins in the family mausoleum have jewelry in them and some on-the-ball writer got an idea for better TV ratings.
The series had been conceived to be more like a detective mystery and not anything to do with the supernatural. Victoria feared that Roger was a murderer for the first 100 episodes.
200 years old? Well they were, at first, confused about that as well, originally saying the family established Collinsport only a century ago, but they finally decided that Naomi and Joshua would have their children Barnabas and Sarah in the late 1700s. The dates on gravestones and mausoleum markers kept changing around.
And, since they couldn't edit tape back then, if someone made a mistake like forgetting one's lines, everyone had to improvise and it went on the air. So you'd grown when the actor who played the cryptkeeper confused who was inside the various coffins because perceptive viewers knew full well that Sarah was over there and Naomi was there, etc.
You are correct that Carolyn was never a werewolf and that was a bad inside joke. But, IMHO, it worked when Maggie/Victoria followed the original curse that "Anyone who loves Barnabas must die" and he found a clever last second way of getting around that curse (it's not as if he had a choice as she was falling to the rocks).
That was far better as an ending than have Mr. Brave Nerd stabbing Barnabas in the back with a wooden stake when Barnabas was busy marrying his Josette (that's rude - I hate when that happens to me).
This movie, underneath the comedy veneer, Tim Burton make-up and "trip down memory lane" period piece aspect, has a more coherent story than the series and first movie.
Did you know that, if they hadn't mercifully canceled the series after 5 years, politically correct sponsors were going to force Barnabas to stop biting other women and marry Dr. Hoffman?
The worst blooper of the original TV series was when Daphne was tied up and it all came undone before her antagonist left the room saying "you will remain tied up until I come back in a few hours". =)
ReplyDeleteSo the bottom line is...it could have been worse. In fact, it could have been more like the original source material.
ReplyDeleteAnd that could only be forgiven (and eaten up) in the era before Twilight.
It was Lara Parker who originally played Angelique and her interest in Barnabas has made a lot of guys jealous to this day.
Not as exciting or as funny as the goofy trailers promised, which is what really bummed me out in the end. I think it's just time for Burton and Depp to take some time apart from one another. Who knows, it may both do them some real good in the future. Good review.
ReplyDeleteRight? They were all like "This movie WILL be funny!" and then it was disappointing! I also agree that Tim and Johnny need some time apart. Thank you for reading!
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