Retro Movie Review: Dark Shadows (2012)

 Dark Shadows was a bit of a weird film to watch. It seemed like it had a lot of elements that should have made it a good movie. However, the execution leaft allot to be desired as it feels like it jumps between themes and keeps shooting itself in the foot when it comes to a cohesive narrative.
 Directed by Tim Burton, Dark Shadows stars Johnny Depp as an immortal vampire who has been buried for 200 years. He was turned into a vampire and buried by Eva Green, a witch who he had an affair with but did not love. When he awakens, he finds his descendants living in his mansion but living as a very dysfunctional family, the family business (of fishing) in ruins, Eva Green still alive and running a competing fishing business and a girl with a hidden past who he falls in love with again, apparently.
 At the start, it feels like the love story was meant to be the central plot of the movie. However, Dark Shadows tries to keep allot of plates spinning. This includes Depp's rivalry with Green, Depp trying to make sense of the world around him, Depp's love story with the girl (who is his descendant's family's governess), Depp trying to re-establish the family business, and Depp getting to know his family and fitting in with them (it is a wonder anyone managed to do anything without Depp's character for 200 years). Unfortunately, it never really solves this problem. Instead it just sort-of jumps between the plots, each with (at best) a flimsy connection to eachother.
 So while each plot, when viewed individually, works, once they are combined, the whole movie becomes a thematic mess. You immediately jump from  what is meant to be a dramatic, romantic scene (between Depp and the governess) into a comedic scene (such as Depp trying to figure out how a television works). Some plot threads are just dropped or left alone in what feels like a cheat when they realized there wasn't a good way to work them into the story of Depp being the good guy. For example, Depp murders a bunch of innocent teenagers/young adults out in the woods having a camping trip, but when it comes time to the showdown between Depp and Green, the town just kind-of forgets about the murders he has committed and hail him as a hero.
 Overall, this movie feels like a collection of short scenes stitched together after being put through a blender. And overall it doesn't work. The movies theme jumps around too much without any clear direction. Eventually, I got tired of trying to figure out whether a scene is meant to be serious, comedic or would even matter in 10 minutes times and lost interest.
 1 out of 5 Dark Waffles.

Retro Review: Monsters, Inc.

With the advent of sequels, reboots and prequels seeming to be everywhere these days, I thought I would share my thoughts on Pixars original Monsters Inc., which recently had a prequel released in Monsters University.

The story of Monsters Inc. is that there is an alternate dimension of monsters. The energy that these monsters need to run their city is based on the screams of children when they are scared. In order to scare them, the monsters emerge from doorway portals into the childrens world to scare them. This is a dwindling resource, however, as kids are becoming harder to scare.

The monsters are also scared of the kids. This is because they fear contamination from the kids which propaganda leads them to believe will kill them. The story follows two monsters, Mike and Sully, who inadvertently leave a kid come into the monsters world. Along the monsters grow attached to the kids, discover the propaganda was wrong and foil a conspiracy from the big corporations.

I liked the banter between the Mike and Sully. It really felt light-hearted and goofy and exactly what you would’ve expected. I also liked the chameleon/snake villain and the way he spoke, as well as the scream factories boss and the way he looked. Both of them felt really villainy, even if a bit generic. Also I liked that all the characters motivations were clear. You always understood where they were coming from in terms of the competition to get more scares, trying to save the company or to help the renegade child. I feel that characters whose motivations you can understand, especially villains, make for much more interesting characters.

I felt like the conspiracy from the villains could’ve been done better. I don’t get why kidnapping the children to use a scream extractor had to be kept a secret especially seeing as dwindling resources was a major problem in the film. Why the boss is immediately arrested for stating he would kidnap children is something I didn't understand.

It was also never explained why they had the propaganda to keep the monsters scared of the children as this feels like it just hamstrung the monsters effectiveness. I may have also just missed this, however. Also, the overall solution of laughter being much more powerful then screams didn’t figure as prominently into the climax as I would have expected. It just seemed to be tacked onto the end to make it feel good seeing as the company was about to go bankrupt. I understand the ending where the energy shortage gets worse and unemployment rises may have been a bit too dark for this movie, but it still felt very tacked on.

Overall, I have to say that I didn't find this movie particularly engaging compared to movies such as Up or Wall-E. Although the characters motivations were clear, the actual characters felt a bit too generic and the plot a tad too predictable. Movies like the Avengers got away with this for me due to the awesomeness of them pulling it off. In Monsters, Inc, I didn’t have the same level of investment in the characters.

I also don’t feel this movie needed a prequel. Although the story felt generic, I still felt it was adequate and pretty much self-contained. I didn’t feel a pressing desire to see how they all got together to be work buddies, and they already showed part of them being trained. In my mind, a prequel serving to show how Mike and Sully became generic characters kind-of misses the point.

3 out of 5 not-so-scary Waffles.