Sweeney Todd

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007)

Directed by: Tim Burton
Written by: John Logan based on the Stephen Sondheim musical
Starring: Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter, Alan Rickman, Jamie Campbell Bower, Jayne Wisener, Timothy Spall, Ed Sanders, Sacha Baron Cohen, Laura Michelle Kelly

First of all, I'm not really partial to musicals. In fact, I try to avoid musicals if I can, so ordinarily I wouldn't even bother with this, only it's Tim Burton and I do like him, sometimes.

It's about this barber who was fucked over by the world and decides to get his revenge by killing his clients. His landlady then bakes them into pies. Mmm, so tasty.

And I must say it was pretty awesome. It was gory enough to compensate for it being a musical. Johnny Depp & Helena Bonham Carter weird good/weird as usual and are surprisingly competent singers. On stage, they probably would have sucked, what with their voices being somewhat feeble.

Alan Rickman, on the other hand... I don't think he should sing. He doesn't sing all that much, but when he does it's really disturbing. I didn't like that at all.

The music itself was pretty good. I mean, it was annoying, but I got used to it. The songs weren't particularly memorable, but the lyrics were pretty good.

Moving on, it looked incredible, although on the scale of Tim Burtony movies, Beetlejuice being very Tim Burtony and, um, Planet of the Apes being WTF, it didn't rank terribly high. Although there was one scene where everything was stripey.

Otherwise, though, it was really dark. I mean, the only colour was red (and what a lot of red there was! My, my! The amount of blood was kind of cartoonish, actually).

So yeah, it was sort of beautiful. I liked it, anyway. The 'young lovers' theme was a little irritating but not terribly intrusive. It's overshadowed by the other love story, which is really much more interesting (the 'dead lovers' theme?).

At the end of the movie, though, I really wanted a meat pie. Terrible, isn't it?

So, very good fairytale, very bloody musical. Deliciously revolting. Johnny and Helena are both disgusting, but strangely sympathetic (and hot, but that's neither here nor there).

Pretty good. I won't go so far as to say it's the best thing Tim Burton's done since whatever, mostly because I can't remember everything he's ever done off the top of my head and I'm a little insecure about making statements like that, but it made me feel sort of happy and depressed at the same time, which is a good feeling.

I recommend it.

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