Sweeney Todd

Review By: Michael Dance
MichaelDance@TheCinemaSource.com

It would be an understatement to say that Tim Burton and Johnny Depp have had a fruitful relationship over the years; Edward Scissorhands is a classic cult flick, and while I didn’t like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, it made a boatload of money now that Depp is on the A-list. That combination of offbeat and popular appeal made them the perfect duo to bring that offbeat but popular stage musical, Sweeney Todd, to the big screen.

A lot of people can’t stand movie musicals on principle, and even though I actually tend to like them, there’s still always the five-minute adjustment period in the beginning. You know: the music swells, the stars break into song, and you begin to wonder whether coming to the theater was such a great idea. If the movie’s good, you eventually accept it and move on; luckily, not only does Sweeney Todd have Burton’s dark and visually appealing sensibilities behind it, but it’s also an interesting story in its own right that allows you to accept all the music as part of the world.

The setting is London in the 1800s: a dirty, rat- and roach-infested hellhole. Fifteen years ago, a barber named Benjamin Barker was ripped away from his lovely wife and young daughter by a corrupt judge (Alan Rickman), who stole the daughter and left the wife to die. Barker returns from Australian exile as Sweeney Todd, a man driven mad with a murderous desire for revenge against the judge. And pretty much anyone else.

Underneath his old barbershop is a restaurant run by Mrs. Lovett (Helena Bonham Carter), who makes the worst pies in London. The crux of the story is the arrangement they set up: he slits the throats of all his customers while shaving them and dumps them in the cellar, where Mrs. Lovett bakes the bodies into her pies.

As you might imagine, this is not a musical full of big, happy ensemble numbers, and hey, that’s great – it’s about time we had a merciless, unconventional, violent musical. But while there would seem to be plenty of dark, macabre fun to be had, there’s really not. This is a depressing, gruesome tragedy.

While that can be fun too – at least in a certain sense of the word “fun” – I’m disappointed that the story doesn’t go all the way with it. To make the audience feel better, I guess, there’s a side plot involving a young romantic (Jamie Campbell Bower) and Sweeney’s daughter, the now 16-year-old Johanna (Jayne Wisener). They fall in love by looking at each other through a window and sing a few painfully whiny love songs. I guess this is supposed to be the “happy” part of the story, but their characters were so annoying that I began to wish they would find themselves on the wrong side of Sweeney’s blade.

But no, instead we get a montage with lots of ...