Movie review: Tim Burton and Johnny Depp go light in "Dark Shadows"

Tim Burton is in so many ways a family-values director. Throughout his offbeat career from "Beetlejuice" to "Edward Scissorhands" to "Corpse Bride" collections of outcasts, odd ducks and those who feel themselves to be such are allowed their dysfunction, misunderstandings and deep affections.

"Dark Shadows" is no different. Though hardly in a class with Burton or star Johnny Depp's most memorable collaborations, this big-screen take on the cult-beloved daytime soap, which ran from 1966 to 1971, is an often amusing, teasingly naughty lark.

Depp is vampire Barnabas Collins. Cursed and entombed nearly 200 years, the pale biter in need of a manicure arrives at his ancestral home in 1972.

Collinwood Manor

has fallen into disrepair, and the family's fortunes in the seaside fishing town of Collinsport, Maine, founded by Barnabas' father, have dwindled. Meanwhile Angelique, the witch who first cursed Barnabas and killed his beloved Josette, is doing quite well, thank you very much. Eva Green portrays the still-scorned, business-savvy Angie.

Like many a high-and-mighty clan, the modern Collinses are a rather dissipated bunch. Michelle Pfeiffer plays descendent Elizabeth Collins Stoddard. Pfeiffer remains a preternatural beauty, which befits her role as matriarch of the diminished clan that includes 15-year-old daughter Carolyn ("Kick-Ass" star Chlo Grace Moretz), brother Roger (Jonny Lee Miller) and his troubled young son, David (Gully McGrath).

Helena Bonham Carter takes daffy pleasure in portraying the family's live-in shrink. Dr. Julia Hoffman hasn't helped the Collinses much, but she's quite skilled at self-medicating. She also discovers Barnabas' identity.

Willie Loomis, the household's jack-of-all-trades but mostly of drink, is slovenly

The Collinwood crew in "Dark Shadows," Tim Burton's danse macabre complete with mirror ball. (Provided by Warner Bros.)

inhabited by Jackie Earle Haley.

Newly hired governess Victoria Winters (Bella Heathcote) bears an uncanny resemblance to Josette.

Audiences have grown utterly accustomed to tales of the aching ardor, pangs of conscience and ravenous hunger of vampires. The comedic "Dark Shadows" adds little to conversations about timeless romantic hankering or the bottomless thirst that makes fuel of foe, friend and stranger alike.

The charms here are of a decidedly stranger-in-a-strange-land variety. From the moment Barnabas rises in a 1970s world made garish and vivid thanks to the invention of neon lights, there are winks and nudges aplenty.

Many of the gags are in the details: a board game here, the strains of 1970s pop, a

Johnny Depp as Barnabas Collins in "Dark Shadows." (Provided by Warner Bros Pictures)

Gothic manse foyer crowded with the abandoned sports equipment of spoiled children. Who knew troll dolls would function as a madeleine for a certain generation? Burton, that's who.

There are slightly more elevated visual nods: to the original bloodsucker film, F.W. Murnau's still-disquieting silent "Nosferatu"; and to the high Gothic stylings of Alfred Hitchcock's "R! ebecca."

The greatest jests come from Barnabas' stilted way of speaking and Depp's eternally deadpan delivery.

In 1990, "Edward Scissorhands" brought moviegoers one of the more tenaciously imaginative star-director pairings in Depp and Burton. This is their eighth outing (not counting "The Nightmare Before Christmas," which Burton produced and co-wrote).

"Dark Shadows" reiterates their mutual bond of eccentric humor.

While Dan Curtis' daytime series didn't wink much, kitsch and camp rule in this wholly appreciative rendering.

There is a bit of sweet melancholy to the goings-on at Collinwood Manor. How could it be otherwise when a little boy is treated as crazy? Or when a powerful ancestor shows up, surveys a tarnished legacy and wants to help?

But mostly "Dark Shadows" is silly when we're trained to expect slightly richer fun from Burton and Depp. As it's said of the Collins family again and again, one turn of the emotional screw might have made this film "endure."

Lisa Kennedy: 303-954-1567 or lkennedy@denverpost.com

"DARK SHADOWS." Directed by Tim Burton. Written by Seth Grahame Smith. Photography by Bruno Delbonnel. Starring Johnny Depp, Michelle Pfeiffer, Helena Bonham Carter, Eva Green, Jackie Earle Haley. PG-13. 120 minutes. At area theaters.