But, in this Golden Age of Hype, never was it more needed. So we cling on. Which brings me to Burton's latest offering, Dark Shadows, a film version of a cult American TV series from way back when, about a 200-year-old vampire who finds himself resuscitated in counter-cultural, hippy-dippy 1972. Burton's stalwart leading man, Johnny Depp, plays the creature, Barnabas Collins, who returns just in time (he hopes) to save his descendants from economic ruin at the hands of the very witch (Eva Green) who cast him into blood-sucking darkness all those years before.

You're probably asking, even on the basis of this skimpy outline, how she has managed to survive for 200 years and adapt perfectly well to ever changing fashions and ways while our hero has had to languish in a coffin six feet under. To this question, we get no answer. In fact there are so many narrative loose ends in this film you could be forgiven for thinking the script was the result of one of those party games of Chinese whispers, where everybody adds a little bit to a story without knowing what comes before or after.

 Instead of plot, we have a host of characters, who have lines but no discernible point. Helena Bonham Carter (Mrs Burton) plays the family's in-house shrink but is given nothing of any consequence to do, and certainly nothing funny to say, which surely would be the only point in having her there in the first place. As the family matriarch, Michelle Pfeiffer makes an extremely rare movie appearance but, again, is barely used. Once a leading lady of quite extraordinary beauty, Pfeiffer is still in remarkable shape, although here she doesn't so much move as position herself, as though she were nervous that too rapid a movement would reveal the cruel passing of the years.

Like Alice, this film has all the Burton trademarks: crumbling houses, hollowed-out eyes on pale faces, a pseudo-gothic musical score by Danny Elfman. But that really is all there is. It's a big load of nothing: no laughter, no frights, no wit. Even Barnabas's reactions to the modern world are underplayed and sporadic: he marvels at the television yet never mentions the way people around him are dressed. And the famed Burton "darkness" is little more than a stylistic tic nowadays, which tends to make you question whether it was ever anything else. Dark Shadows will probably make a mint, but it's terrible, and it really shouldn't.

 When the word on a forthcoming film is bad, studios will sometimes dispense altogether with screenings for critics. Perhaps this was the case with The Dictator, Sacha Baron Cohen's new comedy, because the bulk of us were denied a preview. Instead, a "select" group of critics were invited to the much-coveted premiere, an unusual development but one which, sadly, rather chimes with my pessimism about our future. And in this case, it was an odd move, because the film is good.