Burton and Depp's best yet

Rating: 9/10 (6 February 2008)

A grown-up cartoon film. Don't be put off by the reports of blood and gore - although there's plenty of that, it's no worse than your average Tom and Jerry, writ large and real. More importantly, it's Burton's best for years. By constraining the action to almost a single set, he enables his actors to stretch, gradually creating evolving characters, and cleverly shifting our sympathies between them. Depp and Bonham Carter rise to the occasion, turning in performances which teeter on the edge between grande guignole and farce - and almost always land on the right side. Oh yes, I almost forgot the music! Which says it all really. Although the spoken-to-sung ratio isn't quite as low as I'd been led to expect, it's still fairly operatic. I'm not a big Sondheim fan (more of a Rodgers and Hammerstein or Loesser man myself), but it's to his credit that there are no big show-stopper first-half-closer tunes in there. As regards Burton's direction, you have to admire and support his preference for classic filmic techniques, rather than clever whooshy jump-cuts, to advance the story to its denouement. A brilliant film. BTW, Johnny sings good!