Sweeney Todd 2007
I had never seen this musical, but I knew the story going in. I was looking forward to some good songs by Stephen Sondheim. Unfortunately the musical and the movie both fizzled for me. I didn’t think the songs were very good, including an early one where Sweeney Todd is reunited with his razors. To me they were just standard musical filler of people singing to get through plot points, not strong centerpiece songs that can stand on their own. Depp and Helena Bonham Carter are good, but they’ve done the white makeup and dark circle eyes so many times before. I wonder if 18 years ago when Johnny Depp made Edwards Scissorhands if he thought he would be appearing in movies with the same hair, makeup, and director? Throw in familiar supporting characters from the Harry Potter movies including Alan Rickman and the guy that plays Wormtail (Timothy Spall) and this seems almost like a ripoff of previous work.
Visually the movie is interesting with a dark and grimy London where even the fresh market features only gray vegetables. Depp is dark, but essentially unchanging throughout the movie. Carter has the most nuanced character, nearly as dark as Depp but hopeful for a happy ending even while she is serving up meat pies made from murder victims. The slasher violence is played mostly for laughs, but is still pretty grim. The blood squirts under high pressure like in Tarantino’s Kill Bill series (and Monty Python’s black knight), so we know it is like a live action cartoon. But given the number of decapitations reported in Iraq, it’s still pretty grim seeing this.
And, as I said before, the songs don’t rescue the movie. There are a couple of good ones (two duets stand out: one with Depp and Rickman praising beautiful women and the other with Depp and Carter planning their enterprise), but they can’t bring sufficient lightness to the very dark plot. Like so many Tim Burton movies in the past, this film has great promise, demonstrates a lot of style, but still comes up short. Though I can’t give this more than a B-, this movie is still worth watching if you know what you are getting into.
Written: 26 Jan 2008