Réalisation:
Tim BurtonPhotographie:
Bruno DelbonnelMusique:
Danny ElfmanActeurs·trices:
Johnny Depp, Michelle Pfeiffer, Helena Bonham Carter, Eva Green, Jackie Earle Haley, Jonny Lee Miller, Chloë Grace Moretz, Bella Heathcote (plus)VOD (4)
Résumés(1)
En 1752, Joshua et Naomi Collins quittent Liverpool, en Angleterre, pour prendre la mer avec leur jeune fils Barnabas, et commencer une nouvelle vie en Amérique. Mais même un océan ne parvient pas à les éloigner de la terrible malédiction qui s’est abattue sur leur famille. Vingt années passent et Barnabas a le monde à ses pieds, ou du moins la ville de Collinsport, dans le Maine. Riche et puissant, c’est un séducteur invétéré… jusqu’à ce qu’il commette la grave erreur de briser le cœur d’Angelique Bouchard. C’est une sorcière, dans tous les sens du terme, qui lui jette un sort bien plus maléfique que la mort: celui d’être transformé en vampire et enterré vivant. Deux siècles plus tard, Barnabas est libéré de sa tombe par inadvertance et débarque en 1972 dans un monde totalement transformé… (Warner Bros. FR)
(plus)Critiques (13)
Les costumes, maquillages et couleurs vives sont irrésistibles, l’ambiance fleurie des années soixante-dix est adorable (avec un excellent générique de début). Plus quelques références et allusions adorables. Mais on s’attendrait à plus de la part des interactions de Johnny Depp (en vieux vampire) avec le monde moderne. Dark Shadows est un film excentrique qui essaie de faire hommage à toutes les choses que Tim Burton aime, sauf qu’à notre grande déception, il n’est pas vraiment drôle et les personnages ne sont que des figures iconiques au sein d’une histoire qui ne captive pas. En d’autres mots, c’est juste une farce qui a du style, mais pas de cœur ni d’émotion. Tim semble s'essouffler et c’est bien dommage. Et ce film m’a évoqué celui-ci.
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Tim Burton's dumbest and most boring film, and I say that as a great admirer of his. So, let's summarize. Typical Burton goofy humour? There’s none of it. Burton's famous bizarre visual styling? Non-existent. The always so distinctive music of Elfman? I didn’t catch it. Immersive plot? Plot? What plot? So what the hell, at least some minor tidbits, like Barnabas's confrontation with modern times? Criminally underused. I'll let Barnabas's fangs bite me if I'm making this up, but these were my two longest hours at the movies in years.
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The reason that this film is overwrought, which can be ignored until the climax rendered in the style of “since we don't know how to elegantly finish this, let’s just set it all on fire”, is not its excess of comical characters whose eccentric behaviour will generate accompanying jokes, of which there are two times more than would be necessary. Rather, the problem consists in the attempt to offer each of the characters a respectable amount of space and to briefly clarify what their problems are and how they intend to resolve them. Even that could be dealt with in the space of two hours. With a screenplay that intertwines the individual storylines and justifies, for example, why the title sequence (which, based on my conservative approach, should be determinative) promises that we will be initiated into the mystery of the Collins family through the disinterested gaze of a visitor from outside, though a pale dandy immediately becomes the star of the evening. ___ Rather than the goals of the protagonist and the others being clear from what they do, we can only more or less guess at what they may be. At every moment, emphasis is placed on a different motif, to which the characters' actions are subordinated. Barnabas is obviously out for revenge, but why not forget about that for a moment when there is a possibility to enrich the film with a few lascivious shots of Eva Green, particularly her legs and cleavage? Ghosts, green vomit, a Chevrolet Impala and Alice Cooper were incorporated into Dark Shadows according to the same logic, i.e. we have an attraction, now let’s come up with a way to shoehorn it into the plot. Everything happens as if in stand-alone episodes, with no internal order, without a more organic interconnectedness. ___ Due to the narrative’s lack of cohesiveness, a good two-thirds of the film is spent waiting for things to finally get going. The filmmakers can’t conceal the fact that the source material was a soap opera with twelve hundred episodes, i.e. part of a television genre whose modus operandi is the endless dilution of nothing. ___ Burton probably wanted to revive the time of his childhood as he perceived it through the lens of an outsider kid. This would explain making the undoubtedly remarkable political context taboo, because at the age of ten, you are more interested in Scooby-Doo than in the bombing of Cambodia. However, that is not an excuse for the degradation of the gothic restyling of the visual aspect into an easily marketable brand, mainly so that it looks “Burtonian”, and letting the camera nicely sell it in colour-coordinated shots that are short on plot. Another best-seller is the heavily made-up Depp making unnatural movements. It’s not necessary for his vampire to be characterised by gestures and grimaces that are different from those of the several dozen movie vampires that came before him or for him to utter truly funny lines; it suffices entirely to come up with enough situations in which he will look like a fish out of water, which is another of Burton’s mechanically repeated trademarks. ___ Unfortunately, the inappropriateness involves more than just the situations in which Barnabas finds himself. Scenes that would be suitable for a serious gothic horror movie or a tragic romantic epic are placed alongside scenes bordering on exploitation trash or parody. Sometimes the transition from the comical to the serious even happens within a single scene (the sit-down with the hippies). The uncertainty as to what will come in the next shot has a parallel in the uncertainty of how Barnabas is actually supposed to be perceived (to go even deeper, this is a reflection of the society-wide uncertainty that was as characteristic of the 1970s as it is of today). At one moment he is an amusing fop and then he acts like a regular horror-movie monster with whom it’s impossible to sympathise despite one’s best efforts. ___ Thanks to this, and because of it, Dark Shadows does not correspond to the fairy-tale division of roles into good and evil. It is not a fantasy world turned upside down in the Burtonian manner, where the traditionally bad guys are the good guys. The confusing fact that neither good nor evil has a clearly defined and stable form is a manifestation of insufficient creative control over a film that, without the rushed ending, might have worked as a series pilot, but in and of itself, it is a film whose attractive surface only draws attention away from the skeleton of the narrative, whose sole purpose is nothing more than to carry that nice-looking skin to market. 60%
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(moins)
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Congratulations to Tim Burton for once again managing to make a bad film. And this time he tried really hard. Not a bit of darkness. Under the surface, another annoying wannabe stylish crap with a heavily made-up Johnny in the main role and an elite cast that has nothing to do under Burton’s direction. Awful, the only good thing is the soundtrack.
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Meaningless bullshit whose characters act like complete idiots to a man. Or the director is an idiot. Either way, I never want to see anything from Tim Burton again in my life and I hope he's making Viagra commercials for the rest of his life.
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Burton fizzled out and there was nothing left but a bunch of make up, pretty sets and once emotive themes. More than anything else, the character of Barnabas is an unintentional authorial self-reflection by a filmmaker who, since Sweeney Todd, has been copying himself and chasing the ghosts of the past.
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It's such a shame that just when most viewers ran out of patience with Tim Burton, Dark Shadows came along. I actually like the master of strangeness, and the story of Barnabas Collins seems better to me than the quickly fading Alice or even more Burton-esque Sweeney Todd. There are a lot of oddities happening at Collinwood that amaze me with the director's imagination, or I can hardly resist laughing. Johnny Depp works perfectly as an atypical protagonist without batting an eye, and the rest of the film is stolen by the pubescent princess Chloe Moretz even in a smaller space. Riding the waves of Elfman's soundtrack, I made it to 90% with a slight reservation for distance and further projection, which a few years later confirmed that the rarely appreciated spectacle got stuck on the turbulent cliffs at that time.
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I remember times when Tim Burton managed to capture my heart and enchant me with a film that had only a fraction of the budget of Dark Shadows. Something is simply wrong and that is despite the fact that an American studio provided exclusive conditions to the well-known director and that a number of top stars, including Burton's favorites Johnny Depp and his ex-partner Helena Bonham Carter, appear on the screen. The potential is there, but except for the sex appeal-loaded Eva Green, nothing works as I would imagine. By the way, I am one of those men who would without hesitation prefer the demonic witch over the boring Bella as the main hero. Overall impression: 55%.
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Burton’s stylization is beginning to bother me a bit. He’s a good director, but everything looks just a bit distant. Depp acting is excellent, Eva Green is demonically beautiful and the rest of the family maintains a good standard. The atmosphere is extremely good, but Dark Shadows doesn’t exploit its full potential, where it should step on the gas, it puts on the brakes for the good of family fun. 70s music great, but it doesn’t come near to Elfman who was on great form again here. "Love means never having to say you're sorry..." However, it is with sincere regret that I must now kill all of you.
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Dark Shadows, the 2012 version, is an absolute delight. The natural evolution of the Burton/Elfman/Depp collaboration rides on the wave of popular fandom that began in 1966 and continued as a daytime soap for five years, followed by two films. There were several failed comebacks over the next few years, with only the 1991 revival series actually succeeding. And now Barnabas is back and can once again connect a new generation of viewers to his story. The short prologue from the second half of the 18th century is wonderfully straightforward and decadent, and I love the setting and atmosphere. But Barnabas back in 1972 is better than ever. There’s a great clash with the post-flower generation, perfect clashes with Angelique (both hateful and loving) who has so far gone from witch to respected citizen of the city in a few generations. Johnny Depp makes the most of his vampire, Eva Green is the ultimate hedonist in every way, Michelle Pfeiffer is still very sexy, combining the best of her Selina Kyle and Lamia, and Helena Bonham Carter has the chops to showcase the vampire again next time. So far, it's been a perfect study of the titular vampire and the Bathory Syndrome. Among the others, we have Christopher Lee in a tiny role and Alice Cooper fans will definitely be pleased. The cameos of the original actors from the series also hold a special place. The 1970s are exactly as they deserve to be recorded here. The combination of gothic comedy is a genre I've been missing and it came just in time.
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I had fun, but unfortunately not all the time. I don't have a single reservation about what happened between the prologue and the end of the ball, where a certain Alice Cooper (the ugliest woman I've ever seen:) ) performed. The film is set in sympathetic semi-darkness, the humor fell on fertile ground in my case (especially the bon mots of Jackie's servant Earl Haley), and Depp's creation of a vampire cautiously exploring a new world amused me (Mephistopheles!) greatly... And yet it all still managed to be thrilling and engaging. So what went wrong? It was definitely in the last third. When it came to the settling of scores, the lynchings by an angry mob and the (admittedly) spectacular finale, in which, for example, one character quite senselessly became a werewolf, I yawned. That’s really too bad. I'm not going to lash out about Tim Burton being stale or anything... He did a good job at conjuring the atmosphere - he just had to keep a close eye on the screenwriter, who clearly wanted to digitally exploit the film's generous Warner Brothers budget at the last minute. Or was he hypnotized?
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Des jeux amoureux drôles et explosifs entre Johnny Depp et Eva Green qui mettent tout sens dessus dessous. Les costumes, l’ambiance, l’humour… tout fonctionne, à part l’histoire qui gâche tout le reste. Dommage, parce que ce film aurait pu devenir culte. Enfin, j’ai passé un bon moment malgré ce point négatif. Eva Green peut avoir n’importe quelle couleur de cheveux, de robe ou de petite culotte, tout lui va ! Et dans Dark Shadows, elle s‘est autant défoulée que dans la pub pour Campari.
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Apart from about two scenes that were already teetering heavily on the edge of awkwardness, this was two very enjoyable hours in the company of brilliant actors, wacky humor, and a rather unconventional soundtrack by Danny Elfman. Of course, Dark Shadows can't measure up to Burton's masterpieces, but it seems to satisfy Burton's (slightly tolerant) fan base as it combines tried and tested techniques from his previous films and the director's signature is still discernible here (on the other hand, something like Sweeney Todd is still a class higher). It's a different Tim Burton than the one we as fans (I include myself among that number) are accustomed to – he's getting more and more wacky, less poetic and imaginative, but still original in his own way. But it in no way deters me from watching his other work closely.
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