Harry Potter and the Demon Barber of Fleet Street

Rating: 5/10 (21 December 2007)

That's one of the alternate titles for the film I thought of while my mind drifted in the theater. Another was 'Everyone Says I Hate You'. Now obviously Sweeney Todd hates a few people but the real reason I came up with that is I was reminded of the Woody Allen musical from the 90s. In that film Mr. Allen wanted to make a musical where normal people with normal voices would just burst into song as if musicals happened in real life. Well that was the point in that film but Sweeney Todd is meant to be a proper musical but generally speaking it's cast can't sing. Now let me be specific Johnny Depp can actually sing. He has a very lovely voice, but I don't think Sweeney Todd should have a lovely voice. It should be forceful, vengeful, angry, not pretty. (I'm no musical expert but I felt like his voice was just the wrong range. Too high.) Helena Bonham Carter is a weak singer too and I even believe that the sound mixers pumped up the accompaniment at times to drown them out a little. Sacha Baron Cohen can sing but he only really sings one song. Alan Rickman has an icky speaking voice so it just makes you wonder why Tim Burton hired these people. Okay I know. He likes them, they're his friends, whatever. But I wish someone else had gotten their hands on this musical and cast people who could sing. Jamie Bower can sing but his acting amounted to a perpetual stink-eye.
I had a bad feeling from the beginning about this one but I kept hearing how great it was and now that I've seen it I just think people don't want to say anything bad about Johnny Depp. I don't either but there are so many other actors in Hollywood that could have played this role that it makes me long for the movie I could have seen. On top of that I didn't buy him as an angry vengeful guy. He's too nice. It comes through. Every time he squished up his face because he was singing/angry he just looked like a bunny.
On top of all that, it's too Tim Burton. I know he has his own style but because this was pre-existing material I would have liked it to look a little less typical Burton. One thing that I thought looked absolutely awful was the 'Clash of the Titans' vintage blood. When a character is killed in that film and the blood comes out it looks like spaghetti sauce. They got the same stuff for this film it seems. So all the people complaining about the blood in this film must eat their pasta plain. My one excuse for such sad looking blood was that it was some kind of throwback to the Hammer horror films, and it did seem like they were trying to make a Hammer musical but it was too dark and drained of all color for that. The attempts at humor didn't come off as dark comedy to me. It just strayed into silliness. So really I put it all on Tim Burton. I don't know what happened because I usually enjoy his films quite a bit. The one shining light was the little boy (Ed Sanders) who can sing and act.
I have seen the DVD of the stage version of this musical with George Hearn and Angela Lansbury. So I'm going to say that it really didn't help me to enjoy this film. If you haven't seen that, I'd say see this film first, if you're interested, then go back and watch that. They changed a lot from what I can remember. But if you've seen the musical previously I can't imagine that you'd be very happy with this version. The other thing is that there have been many musical this year with great singing in them. So if this one gets recognized when those others should, that'll be very disappointing.
I certainly hope people don't bring little kids to this because Johnny Depp's in it. Because even though it's pasta sauce and CGI meat, there's still a unhealthy dose of it.