yeah, maybe.

Rating: 4/10 (26 December 2007)

This movie got unusually mean reviews. It is an average movie - it deserves neither scorn, nor adulation. I enjoyed it but it doesn't offer too much that would cause me to watch it again. It's a reasonable effort.
Instead of altering the Ripper case willy-nilly to suit their needs, only small changes have been made (they dismiss all but one Ripper letter). So it was nice to see the actual clues of the case appear and be assembled into a coherent storyline; even though the Prince Edward explanation has been discredited. The envisioning of Victorian London is fresh, and the film technique which suggests the passing of time over crime scenes is fine. So it ends up being less dumb than I imagined. Jack the Ripper is wearing the wrong hat though. (Witnesses describe a man in a deerstalker cap, not an opera-style top-hat)
Heather Graham is a strange piece of casting for a role that requires a decent accent, and the revisions to Victorian culture itself are absurd. The culture is depicted as having very contemporary, relaxed morals: Annie is a whore; you don't sit in a garden, or visit the Victoria and Albert museum with a whore in 1888. And you just aren't seen in public with anyone but your wife, or there's a scandal. Oh, Mary can read!? Unlikely. Mary has improbable middle-class values and behavior. She'd more likely be a nasty, unwashed, ignorant, uncultured, drunk, prematurely-aging guttersnipe; as Ripper's victims were.
The lamest part of the movie is that it hints at two or three options for who might be Jack, then selects the culprit you suspected the first second he was introduced (Gee... that was underwhelming!) And the idea that an underground society actually meets underground (!) is um, quaint.
After seeing Sweeney Todd for the first time this week, Burtons' effort looks even less original or thoughtful than I previously granted. All he did was glance at this earlier Depp vehicle; borrow the whole production and add the songs. Heather even ends up living "by the sea!"