Good, dark fun, this remake of the 1966-71 TV series might have seemed better had Jack and I seen the original, but we still liked it a lot. Director Tim Burton's (covered in Alice in Wonderland) fingerprints are all over it, with undead people, fantastic special effects, his baby mama Helena Bonham Carter (last in these pages in The King's Speech) in a supporting role as the psychiatrist Dr. Hoffman, and, at the top of the credits, in his eighth collaboration with Burton (to Carter's seventh), Johnny Depp (most recently in The Rum Diary) as 250-year-old Barnabas Collins. Michelle Pfeiffer (profiled in Chéri) and Chloë Grace Moretz (last mentioned in Hugo) can hold their own with Carter and Depp as the human mother and daughter Elizabeth and Carolyn who move into Collins' house in 1972. Supporting power comes from Eva Green (Isabelle in Bertolucci's The Dreamers (2003) and Bond girl Vesper in Casino Royale (2006)) as the devilish Angelique, Bella Heathcote (new to me) as the angelic Josette / Victoria, Jackie Earle Haley (he started acting in 1972 at 11, but is probably best known as Moocher in both the Breaking Away (1979) movie and TV series (1980-81) and as the convicted child molester in Little Children (2006), which earned him an Oscar nomination and some other wins), Jonny Lee Miller (Trainspotting (1996), Melinda and Melinda (2004), and a series arc as a motivational speaker on Dexter in 2010, among others), and, in cameos, Christopher Lee as Clarney and Alice Cooper as himself.
Burton clearly likes writer Seth Grahame-Smith, who wrote the novel and screenplay for the Burton-produced Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter (coming soon) and is in the process of writing Beetlejuice 2 (coming later).
Another Burton regular, Danny Elfman (I wrote about him in detail in Restless, and have many of his soundtracks in my iTunes library, though none from his work with Oingo Boingo--I'll have to do something about that) provides the mood music, a few tracks of which are on youtube, though the musical stylings from the 1970s are what you'll remember best, and imdb has provided us with a list and the blog Indie Wire a few tracks. Supposedly one can listen to clips from the entire record on this link, but on my computer it has been buffering for 15 minutes. Lucky for me I have 141 instrumental cuts from Elfman to keep me in the mood while writing.
Because we were unfamiliar with the series, we totally missed that Jonathan Frid, who played Barnabas on TV, had a cameo as a party guest, in his last role before dying this April. Joining him in that scene were others from the series: Lara Parker, Kathryn Leigh Scott, and David Selby, who reported they were "treated like royalty" on the set.
Nit-picking imdb readers have submitted some anachronisms, but they didn't dim our enjoyment of this romp. Be forewarned that critics at 40% and audiences at 48% on rottentomatoes hated it. So who're you gonna trust? Them or us?
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