Tuesday 22 May 2012

Dim Silhouettes

Ah, the latest Tim Burton film with Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter. Which is most of them, but this is the latest one. Based on a soap opera, as it happens.

Back in the past this dude spurns the love of a woman who, it turns out, is a witch, so she curses him to become a vampire and has him buried away. Nearly 200 years later, he's back baby! And then tries to restore the family name after the witch (who is also still around) is running the town businesses. And there's also some story about the woman he loved being, basically, reincarnated, but that's only when the movie remembers to reference it. The movie has far more fun with Depp as the vampire, and then with Eva Green as the witch than with anything else going on.

As a cohesive whole, the movie isn't a cohesive whole, more a set of loosely related set pieces, that aren't that brilliant. It's only because of the great acting on display that I was happy to watch more, but I did tire of the story very quickly. Along with Depp and Green, we have Michelle Pfeiffer, and cameos by Christopher Lee and Alice Cooper.

Mildly fun, this is Tim Burton after all, but not overwhelmingly so.

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