Considering who it was up against, “Dark Shadows” did respectably well at the box office last weekend: it walked away with $28 million, which would be bad news if it weren’t up against “The Avengers”, which made $100 million last weekend and is probably coming to curbstomp “Battleship” next Friday as well.
It did less well with critics, pulling in 44% on Rotten Tomatoes.
As for us, well, it’s not the unmitigated disaster of, say, “Alice in Wonderland”. But it’s a mixed bag, as a movie, and it desperately needed an R rating.
We will say it’s way better than the trailer led us to believe; for some reason they picked the crappiest jokes in the entire movie to stuff into the trailer. Possibly this is because most of the actually funny jokes can’t be put on television, like Johnny Depp calling Chloe Moretz a whore, or Johnny Depp murdering hippies.
The cast is actually really good and well used: Johnny Depp carries the movie but everybody works overtime to make this movie work. Jackie Earl Haley as Willie was an especially inspired choice: he plays off of Depp really well.
The rating is the problem here: it’s blatantly obvious that the original script was darker and probably had a lot more in the way of dirty jokes, and somewhere along the way, big chunks of that got hacked out to please the MPAA. The result is something tonally confused, to put it mildly: the first third is straight up Hammer horror, the second third is a fish out of water comedy, and then the whole thing turns into Wannabeetlejuice.
What’s really sad is that Burton and Depp really are obviously fans of the show: the script is littered with mythology gags and references, a good chunk of the still-living cast pops up for a cameo, including Jonathan Frid, and the love of the material is obvious. But somewhere along the way, something went wrong.
Did you see it, and if so…what’d you think?
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was Ben Cross in it? seems like they’ve been going out of their way to ignore that iteration of the show.
i guess they want it to be remembered as a shitty soap opera and a crap johnny depp film instead of an uninspired one and a half season 90s scifi fantasy show.
I don’t remember seeing him. But I’ll defend the original show: it was cheap, and ridiculous, but unique.
I don’t think the rating was the problem at all, there was plenty of dark humor in the movie. More graphic violence and/or dirtier jokes wouldn’t have saved it. I thought it was just fine for the first hour and a half. Not non-stop hilarity but interesting and fun in a campy sort of way (which makes sense given the source material), and Depp and the rest of the cast were great. It’s a great dysfunctional family comedy, made a little darker and chessily gothic than your run of the mill fare by Burton and Co. (like Casper on crack).
It just fell apart at the end, the last 30 minutes are excruciating. Cliche, predictable, boring. What do you expect when it devolves into an extended fight scene? Pretty much none of the plot threads are wrapped up other than that of the witch, who was the LEAST interesting (if definitely hottest) character in the movie, and the governess, which was just stupid.
I had a feeling during the entire climax of the film that some studio exec was breathing down Burton’s neck “This is a movie about vampires and witches and ghosts! Kid’s love that shit! There’s got to be a fucking fight scene! and werewolfs! and ghost mom! and Umathurmanshotgungodthiscokeisgood!!!” It was just bad. What happened with the kid? and his dad? and the business? and the rest of the family? I guess we’ll never know but at least we got to watch a half assed action sequence with a bunch of terrible special effects! Yay?
I wouldn’t say it ruined the entire movie. I still really enjoyed the first hour and half. It was just more disappointing than not when all was said and done.
Considering there’s a blatant sequel hook, I’d say Warners was convinced it had a franchise set up here.