Before I get started, I acknowledge that the movie Dark Shadows was based off of a show that had much more of a darker and more serious tone than this movie. I would also like to say that I never watched the show and know next to nothing about it. Having said that, I would like to say something to all of the naysayers who keep bashing this movie strictly for that: I DON'T CARE. In the same way I actually liked the latest Star Trek and Get Smart movies even though it strayed away from their source material at times. I never watched the shows or any of the previous movies, so I could really care less how well they hold up. As an action movie and as a comedy, I thought they were good. Dude, when are people going to make a show off of something I grew up with? Oh wait, that's right, they're making Battleship. Be careful what you wish for I guess. But I digress, now that I have gotten that part out of the way, let's move on.
Something you should know about me is that I am a huge Tim Burton fan, and I am one of those people who actually like the pairing of him and Johnny Depp. I know a number of people are thinking that this act is starting to get stale, but I still get a kick out of them from time to time. The thing about Burton's movies is that even if I think the story sucks, I can still find something worth enjoying about it. An example of two Tim Burton movies that I legitimately enjoy as a whole would have to be Sweeney Todd and Edward Scissorhands, both of which actually rank amongst my favorite movies of all time. The visual style is great, they both have great stories, and with Sweeney Todd, I just love the fact that they stuck with keeping it a musical. Now a movie that I like for some reasons and not for others is Alice in Wonderland. I know a lot of people consider that to be his biggest failure, and even I have to admit that it mostly sucks, but there are still parts about it that I enjoy. The characters are crazy the way they are in the book, and the way Burton imagined Wonderland being like from a visual standpoint was actually very similar to the way I imagined it when I read the story in English class the year before. I guess you could say that in some cases, Tim Burton is a visual artist before he is a film maker, because I felt the same way about his version of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. I'm not saying that his version is better than the one with Dr. Frodrick Frankenstein, but there are areas that I think are improvements. For example, the way the factory looked in his version was a lot more like the way I imagined it in the book. I was read the original novel when I was young, and when I imagined the way the factory would be, and I saw the movie from the 70's, I thought it was a little underwhelming. Okay, I get that this was a long time ago and they didn't have the technology that they have today, but I like seeing the extra steps that Burton was able to take in order to create his vision for Wonka's factory. Having said that, I don't even really like to compare the versions of Roald Dahl's classic because I like both of them in their own unique way.
Okay, so you are probably wondering what I thought of their latest collaboration, Dark Shadows. Well, to be honest, if I had to rank this movie on a scale of Tim Burton movies, I would put this one right in the middle. If Edward Scissorhands and Sweeney are at the top and Alice in Wonderland is at the bottom, this would go right next to Sleepy Hollow. I definitely enjoyed it and laughed at a number of parts, but there were other areas that I though were a little meh. Overall, if you are a Burton fan in the sense that I am, you will enjoy it. As for everybody else, I can't make any guarantees seeing as how you are all fair game.
