DARK SHADOWS (Rated PG-13)

The selling point for turning the nearly forgotten cult classic TV soap opera “Dark Shadows” into an extravagant big screen venture may be summed up by noting the pairing of two great talents: director Tim Burton and actor Johnny Depp.

A cinematic collaboration of Burton and Depp is longstanding, going back more than two decades when they first teamed up creatively, as director and star respectively, in “Edward Scissorhands.”

Ever versatile, Depp has starred in other Burton-directed films, including “Ed Wood,” “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” and “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street,” for which he won an Oscar.

That a Tim Burton movie starring Johnny Depp is the closest thing to a sure bet in the film industry is proven once again with the wickedly funny “Dark Shadows.”

Once again, Depp fits nicely in the role of an oddball character, this time Barnabas Collins, an unfortunate victim of a romance gone wrong during the late 18th century.

As a member of a prominent New England family that built a fishing empire in a coastal Maine town, Barnabas was rich, powerful and an inveterate playboy.

The master of Collinwood Manor, a massive 200-room mansion, Barnabas fell in love with a beauty named Josette (Bella Heathcote) and made the mistake of breaking the heart of Angelique (Eva Green).

A witch in every sense of the word, Angelique caused Josette to take her own life in a plunge from a cliff and then doomed Barnabas to a fate worse than death.

First, Barnabas was turned into a vampire and then buried alive in a steel coffin wrapped in unbreakable chains that was strategically placed deep underground on the outskirts of Collinsport.

Nearly two centuries later, Barnabas is inadvertently freed from his tomb by a construction crew and emerges into the very changed world of 1972, an outsider in an even stranger time.

Awakened from his slumber, and being the vampire that he is, Barnabas has a nearly unquenchable thirst for blood, resulting in the immediate demise of the entire work crew.

Returning to Collinwood Manor, he finds that his once-stately mansion has fallen into shambles, tended by his descendants who are apparently incompetent stewards of the family estate.

Family matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard (Michelle Pfeiffer) is the only person who seems to have the least bit of interest in holding together the family legacy.  

Elizabeth’s brother Roger (Jonny Lee Miller) is a deadbeat. Her rebellious teenage daughter Carolyn (Chloe Grace Moretz) sulks constantly. Roger’s young son David (Gully McGrath) is precocious but mostly neglected by everyone.

The Collins family is so dysfunctional that they have a resident shrink, Dr. Julia Hoffman (Helena Bonham Carter), who spends most of her time hitting the bottle.

Speaking with a British accent, Barnabas turns out to behave in a rather odd and anachronistic fashion, his wit expressed in a deadpan manner that is grandly arch and delightfully skewering.

The newest member of the Collins’ household that fascinates Barnabas is the live-in nanny Victoria (Bella Heathcote), who coincidentally bears a striking resemblance to his great and long-deceased love Josette.

As Barnabas sets out to restore his family name to its former glory, the one impediment to his mission is the current leading denizen of Collinsport, the very same Angelique who remains an ageless beauty.

The passing of two centuries has not mellowed Anqelique one bit. She’s the same envious witch who buried Barnabas alive, and her jealousy is stirred once again upon realizing that the comely Victoria has attracted his attention.

Hostility between Barnabas and Angelique is not relegated to just romantic rivalry. Barnabas sets out to rebuild the family’s cannery in order to displace Angelique’s firm hold on the local fishing industry.

Aside from the clash of their business interests, Barnabas and Angelique engage in one massively huge physical skirmish that is fraught with electric sexual tension.

Whether jousting verbally with Angelique or sitting around the campfire with a bunch of hippies, Barnabas remains, for the most part, mannered and possessed of sublime gothic cool.

Indeed, the best thing about “Dark Shadows,” aside from the wit and deadpan humor expressed artfully by Johnny Depp, is simply the fact that Depp is very much in his element once again in a Tim Burton film.

Knowledge of the film’s underlying source material is absolutely irrelevant. All that matters is that “Dark Shadows” is thoroughly entertaining and should be an early winner in the summer movie sweepstakes.
 
Tim Riley writes film and television reviews for Lake County News.