GONE FOR A BURTON (DARK SHADOWS)

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OK. So it's been almost four weeks.

However just in case you started to think I'd gone for a Burton, I'm back to tell you I've gone to a Burton.

Tim Burton's 'Dark Shadows' is a typically campy comedy from the director of 'Batman', 'Beetlejuice' and 'Sleepy Hollow' focussing on families, death and vampire immortality.

Based on an obscure daytime American soap opera about vampires in New England, it reunites the gothic moviemaker with his favourite muse, Johnny Depp and is very much a labour of love for both the director and his star.

It was first mooted when they were shooting 'Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street' and, no doubt, on paper it appeared to have all the ingredients of a classic Burton and Depp collaboration - an eccentric central character, other oddball characters, goofball humour.

The movie begins in the urine stenched port of 1760's Liverpool which Depp's character, Barnabas Collins leaves with his parents for a better life in Maine.

The Collins family quickly establish a successful fishing business and have a town Collinsport named after them.

However the family is cursed when Barnabas has an affair with a servant girl Angelique (Eva Green) but spurns her for his true love Josette (Bella Heathcote).

Hell hath no fury, however, like a woman scorned.

Angelique turns out to be a witch and she casts a spell which leads to Josette plunging to her death from a cliff top, only to be followed by a grief stricken Barnabas.

 While the fall onto the sea rocks kills Josette, the curse means Barnabas survives only to become a vampire and suffer eternal heartbreak.

Angelique soon turns the town against Barnabas and he is chained in a metal coffin in the local woods.

 While she successfully builds a fishing business, generation after generation of the Collins family rolls about in a decrepit mansion while their business also goes into decline.

Cut to 1972 when a disturbed young woman Victoria (Heathcote again) arrives in Collinsport to take up a job as a nanny to the equally troubled David Collins (Gulliver McGrath) whose mother has succumbed to the family curse and died at sea.

He lives with his feckless father Roger (Jonny Lee Miller), his hippy cousin Carolyn (Chloe Grace Morretz), a family doctor Julia Hoffman (Helena Bonham Carter) and the family matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard (Michelle Pfeiffer) in the dusty, gothic mansion.

However their lives change when workmen stumble upon Barnabas's coffin off Route 9 and release him into 1972, only to be slaughtered because of his vampire blood lust.

He soon acquaints himself with the Collins family and vows to restore the family honour, destroy Angelique and her successful fishing business.

Burton's movie makes much out of the culture clash between the 18th Century America of Barnabas and the America of 1972.

Barnabas is constantly bemused by the world he now finds himself in - a world of lava lamps, the buzzing board game Operation, the Carpenters singing 'Top of the World' on TV, Chevrolet cars, Alice Cooper, precocious teenagers and Scooby Doo.

 The movie's funniest line is about McDonald's famous golden arches.

And while 'Dark Shadows' is peppered with Burton's trademark eccentric humour, his comedy nevertheless falls short.

While Depp gives a typically quirky and enjoyable lead performance as Barnabas and Eva Green is impressive as Angelique, many of the supporting roles feel underdeveloped.

Jonny Lee Miller and Bella Heathcote have little to do, while Helena Bonham Carter and Michelle Pfeiffer are never really allowed to break loose. Christopher Lee pops up in an all too brief cameo.

Only Chloe Grace Moretz is allowed to shine as a surly teenager - turning in another impressive performance after her roles in Matthew Vaughn's 'Kick Ass' and Martin Scorsese's 'Hugo'.

 Moretz is fast becoming the most electric teenage screen presence in cinema today and appears to be vying with Saoirse Ronan for the heir to Jodie Foster's crown.

While having its moments, Seth Grahame Smith and John August's plot feels a little saggy.

However on the plus side, the movie Is technically accomplished as all Tim Burton's movies tend to be.

Audiences will no doubt marvel at Colleen Atwood's sumptuous costumes, John Bush's art design and Bruno Delbonnel's assured cinematography.

 But while 'Dark Shadows' is enjoyable enough, it ultimately lacks bite.

('Dark Shadows' opened in the Movie House and other UK and Irish cinemas on May 11, 2012. This review originally appeared on Eamonnmallie.com)

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