It’s difficult to pay tribute to something in earnest and yet spoof it at the same time. Err too far on the side of sincerity, and you have something that rings false. Take the satire too far, and you have a movie that’s funny for 15 minutes.
But in “Dark Shadows,” Tim Burton and screenwriters Seth Grahame-Smith and John August get the balance right. They don’t get it perfect. There are times when the movie drags. But when you consider all the pitfalls avoided and the laughs and pleasures it provides, “Dark Shadows” is a satisfying and skillful effort.
One graceful touch is that they plow through all the intricate backstory in an entertaining pre-credits sequence that tells how Barnabas Collins (Johnny Depp) became a vampire. “Dark Shadows” can be seen as the story of a man whose unaccountable taste in women — he says no to Eva Green, who plays a witch — lands him in a coffin for 200 years.
When he is dug out two centuries later, the year is 1972, but Barnabas still talks as if it were 1770. He sees a car’s headlights and thinks he is seeing the eyes of the devil. He sees a television set and believes that little people are trapped inside. You might think that the fish-out-of-water aspect might get old after two or three jokes, but “Dark Shadows” successfully taps that vein, so to speak, for the entire movie.
Part of the success comes from the fact that 1972 is alien not just to him, but to us. So mixed in there is an early-’70s spoof, of the drugs and the counterculture, and of Wishnick dolls, lava lamps and board games.