Macabre and gruesomely entertaining revisionist musical

Rating: 8/10 (23 December 2007)

"Bright, cheerful and fun" are three of the words one would most commonly hear when describing the latest movie musical. Not coincidentally, none of the aforementioned words in any way describe Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, eccentric director Tim Burton's adaptation of Steven Sondheim's macabre stage musical. In many ways, Burton's latest serves to either deconstruct or blatantly oppose the conventions of most glitzy cinematic musicals, resulting in a uniformly pitch black, macabre, gruesome and undeniably entertaining film, the likes of which have seldom been exposed to mass audiences.
In many ways, Burton's Sweeney Todd functions as the "anti-musical" - the notion of passing off Sondheim's gruesome but clever story of a nihilistic, vengeance seeking barber and his similarly deranged landlady under the guise of a mainstream musical is a subversive idea indeed, and Burton contrasts the typical musical flashy cinematography and stunning choreography with static camera movement and musical numbers sung with little to no movement - all the more unsettling but eerily captivating and fascinating. Burton is also given the opportunity to unleash his twisted visual genius upon the setting, and his atmospheric vision of turn of the century London is a gritty visual masterpiece, a world of deep greys, consistent shadows and even shadier denizens. With its slew of throat slitting, the film also stands out as one of the most visceral and outright bloody films in recent memory, proving equally effective as a Gothic horror thriller than as a movie musical. And while the film may occasionally feel unbalanced, rushed and underdeveloped in the same way which plagues many such grandiose stage adaptations, Sweeney Todd unfolds with an operatic flourish unseen in most of its contemporaries, and it is near impossible to avoid being swept up by the gruesomely enjoyable rush of it all.
The film's eccentric and endlessly talented cast prove equally proficient singers as they are superbly capable of crafting a memorably deranged myriad of characters. Johnny Depp embraces the titular Sweeney Todd with a malicious relish just as laudable as his superb previously unheard singing voice. Depp's brooding presence drives the film, just as quirky, captivating and compelling a lead performance as ever. Helena Bonham Carter similarly brings her offbeat charm to perfect use as Mrs. Lovett, Todd's cheerfully sinister landlady. Alan Rickman is superbly classy as corrupt Judge Turpin, crafting yet another delightfully despicable antagonistic figure to add to his roster of them. His duet "Pretty Women" with Depp is truly an unmissable spectacle. Timothy Spall is perfectly cast as the grimy Beadle Bamford, Turpin's swaggering second in command, and Sacha Baron Cohen is tremendously entertaining in a far too brief role as faux-Italian rival hairdresser 'Signor Pirelli'. Jamie Cambell Bower feels out of place in the gritty surroundings as a more typical mainstream romantic male lead lusting after Todd's daughter, but his presence adds to the "anti-musical" aspect by being pushed to the side in favour of the darker, more compelling leads.
Brash, bloody and gleefully disturbed, Burton's antidote to the mainstream musical proves brilliantly subversive of the conventions of its genre, while boasting a stunning spectacle of a variety unto its own. The chillingly brooding Depp and the rest of the cast are enough to bring Burton's dark vision to gritty life, and the excellent song numbers prove among the most memorable of a year fraught with many movie musical efforts. For all willing to stomach the admittably copious quantities of blood and thoroughly morbid content, Sweeney Todd may prove to be just the thing to counterbalance the syrupy glitz plaguing its musical contemporaries of late - unsettling, stylized and undeniably entertaining... in other words, exactly what one would hope for from a new Tim Burton film.
-8/10