Dark Shadows Review

If you are brand new to our reviews, please click here and subscribe to our youtube channel

Following a record-breaking draw at the box office is no easy task, and the first challenger to The Avengers’ $200 million opening weekend is the new film from Tim Burton, Dark Shadows.
If that name sounds familiar, perhaps is should: the movie is inspired by the television show that debuted roughly a half-century ago…but as he’s known to do, Tim Burton makes this version in a style all his own. The Schmoes Know guys are well-versed in the Burton filmography, which spans such diverse movies from “Beetlejuice” to “Batman” and “Sleepy Hollow” (and of course we have to mention “Pee Wee’s Big Adventure”)…and most of his recent efforts have included Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter.
Depp plays Barnabus Collins, a well-to-do American in the 1700’s who is turned into a vampire thanks to an evil witch’s curse. He finally escapes his enclosed tomb nearly two centuries later, and this undead-monster-out-of-water begins a quest to restore his family name.
Big fans of a handful of Burton movies, Mark and Kristian also feel that occasionally the director’s overt style can overwhelm the story and leave an audience thisting for more substance. Hoping for a happy marriage of humor, thrills and chiils, the Schmoes Know guys ventured into the theater…see what they found lurking in the “Dark Shadows” right now!

Here is our video review for Dark Shadows:

“Dark Shadows” review transcript
-Schmoes Know

INTRO
Kristian: “Welcome Schmoeville! It is another episode of the review show that we do here…how about that?”
Mark: “Good intro, Kristian!”
K: “Thanks!”

VIDEO CLIP

M: “Hey Schmoeville, welcome to the Schmoes Know movie show, we review movies on here, and today we’re doing ‘Dark Shadows’.”
K: “That’s right, ‘Dark Shadows’, the new Tim Burton movie with Johnny Depp and Danny Elfman…”
M: “And Helena Bonham Carter…shocking, the people in this movie.”
K: “Normally over the last couple years, Tim Burton films have suffered from just being a Tim Burton film…his style, ‘look at me, I’m Tim Burton, I don’t care about story, there’s a crazy image over there…’”
M: “You’re saying sometimes the director overtakes the movie, it’s a little too Nicholas Winding Refn for you.”
K: “No no no…he incorporates story; Tim Burton has become just ‘I’m Tim Burton, I’m gonna let you know that this is a Ti Burton movie’, and I was worried that this was gonna become that.”
M: “Then the movie comes on, we got a good story going, and then what happens Kristian?”
K: “It stinks!”
M: “It doesn’t stink.”
K: “It stinks, and here’s the problem with it…”
M: “Well, as you so eloquently say…”
K: “It reeks?”
M: “The ass falls out of it.”
K: “Oh. The ass falls out of it.”
VIDEO CLIPS
K: “When the movie starts out, it doesn’t suffer from that thing, it’s Tim Burton actually focusing on the story.”
M: “I’m on board, yeah, the story being that Johnny Depp becomes cursed by a witch, turns into a vampire in the 1700’s, and lo and behold…she gets jealous like most women, she buries him for 200 years, he wakes up and it’s 1972. He’s gotta restore his family name against the evil witch. Really cool story, then what happens?”
K: And then the prologue ends, you have this cool young actress, she looks like a young Michelle Pfieffer, which is ironic because old Michelle Pfieffer is in this…”
M: “The real Michelle Pfieffer is in this…”
K: “Well she’s old and she’s real…and I’m like ‘wait a minute…this is gonna be about this girl and her story…and, she’s got a secret! What is that secret?’ And then, eh…”
M: “Then Johnny Depp comes back to 1972 and it’s his story and they focus on him…he’s fantastic in the movie, which is a nice transition into the acting, but was he supposed to be the star of this movie, or do we just fall in love with Johnny Depp?”
K: “Well…I’m a huge ‘Royal Tenenbaums’ fan…”
M: “Well good for you, thanks for sharing…”
K: “Well, the reason I say that you simpleton rat is that when Gene Hackman comes back? Yes, he’s a big powerful force, but it’s also about these people and this family around him and the stuff that’s going on…and that’s I wanted from this movie, I wanted to know more about Chloe Moretz and the little kid and Michelle Pfieffer…but it’s all about this Barnabus, Johnny Depp and the absurdity of his coming back, and it just dies halfway through the movie.”
M: “Well, he is a vampire.”
VIDEO CLIPS
K: “One of the disappointing things is that you have such an all-star cast in this.”
M: “I was really hoping Michelle Pfieffer would have more to do…and Helena Bonham Carter isn’t underused, but I wanted…”
K: “She’s in a Tim Burton movie, really?”
M: “But she’s so talented, Johnny Lee Miller has nothing to do, they kick him out halfway through, and it just kinda falls apart.”
K: “Yeah and then you have Eva Green who is the evil in this one, she’s the antagonist, and she to me, and maybe this is Tim Burton’s fault, I thought she was way too over the top…like she was playing a Disney villain. And it’s like, ‘bring it down, subtle, subtle’.”
M: “I didn’t think she was awful, and she is not hard to look at…she may even be a hotter Anne Hathaway. Can I say that?”
K: “Sure.”
VIDEO CLIPS
K: “And then you have Chloe Moretz who is great, but again…she’s this sexed-up teenager, she’s making all these weird faces throughout the movie, and I don’t know what she’s doing…and again I think it’s Tim Burton. Tim Burton and Johnny Depp, they were big fans of this tv show. This was a tv soap opera…I didn’t know what it was, did you?”
M: “Nope.”
K: “It had an audience, they were a part of that audience and they wanted to bring it to life, and I just think they got carried away with something that didn’t work.”
M: “There’s some laughs in this movie, there’s some good action…but you want more of that, more laughs, and halfway through this movie it just takes this weird turn, and you’re like ‘what happened to all the fun that I was having in this theater?”
K: “You see, I think you have to choose, because some of the laughs? Again, subtle humor worked well, but then you get to the ‘70’s, and it’s like joke, joke, joke, joke, and you lose that tone you had in the beginning…because Barnabus? Not a likeable guy…I mean you kinda like him because he’s cursed, but the only reason you don’t despise him entirely is because it’s Johnny Depp.”
M: “Yeah, you not rooting for him that much, you’re not even sure which side you should be on…at least that’s how I felt.”
VIDEO CLIPS
K: “I was very disappointed with this movie, I’m going low, I’m going 2/5 Schmoes.”
M: “I was thinking about this, in the theater I wanted to get it to 3, but I just can’t do it…I gonna go 2.7/5 Schmoes. I can’t even get it to two and three quarters.”
K: “Yeah, well, for Rotten Tomatoes you’re going 2.5 out of 5 because they don’t do 2.7.”
M: “Well they need to.”
K “No…how about you guys? Do you wanna see this movie, are you a Tim Burton fan, are you a Johnny Depp fan? Have you seen this movie and do you disagree? Comment below and let us know…hey that rhymed. Subscribe up there.”
M: “Subscribe up there Dr. Seuss, thank you.”
K: “You’re welcome.”
VIDEO CLIPS
K: “Hey, one last thing, if you watched Box Office Sunday this past Sunday, and we had out little debate about the battery charger? Guess what? I found it…where was it? In a bad that no one would’ve that to ever look except you.”
M: “You gave me the bag, but tit for tat…point is, we have the charger again, we’re buddies again, everybody’s happy. ‘Together again’…”
K: “Yayyy.”
M: “Together again.”
K: “Cut to commercial, cut to commercial…”

Share on Facebook