Ummmmmmm...well OK

Rating: 4/10 (5 January 2008)

OK...so I've spent a fair amount of time in pit orchestras, and I had to check this out. When one makes one's living in a pit orchestra, one often ends up despising any musical one plays. Night after night of endless repetition of the same story with the same music eventually inflates every flaw in the wretched sing-spiel to the level of Chinese water torture. That is, in most cases.
You see, Sweeney Todd is one of 6 musicals that I'll play anytime. (If you care, the others are Fiddler on the Roof, Into the Woods, West Side Story, Cabaret, and Street Scene...only one of which has a good movie made from it.) The almost operatic intensity of the music and story is compelling, and after having been in the pit for Sweeney Todd...well, I don't really know how many times I've done it, but it exceeds 100...I still like it a lot. If you hated this film, give the 2001 live concert performance with the San Francisco Symphony a look before you write it off. It is nothing short of great. It's short on stage effects and other theatrical devices, but the performance is, nevertheless, staggering.
This film, though. Well, I did not hate it. My previous experience with the musical may have something to do with that. It may be that I am allowing my love for the original material to color my thoughts on this film. It certainly has problems.
Most of the dark humor has been sucked out of it, particularly in the number "Try a Little Priest". I'm so used to it being played with an hysterical mood, that the Gothic nihilism with which this film executes it does nothing to break the mood of what is, let's face it, a very disturbing story.
There are also some cuts I didn't much care for, although I may not have cared for any at all to tell the truth. The musical runs a good 3 hours, and unless you're doing a Tolkien story or something, most movie studios don't want to do that. Still...the musical flows so beautifully in its uncut form. A superb musical sequence involving a gorgeous counterpoint of themes and action between one scene with Anthony & Johanna talking excitedly about eloping and another where the Judge & the Beadle discuss a barber on Fleet Street is reduced to just part of the Judge & Beadle scene. Its absence mars a later number as well. I missed it keenly and played my DVD of the above mentioned 2001 performance as soon as I got home.
OK...a few words about casting, and I'll shut up. From a musical standpoint, Depp is really wrong for this role. Throughout I kept thinking "Edward Scissorshands". His voice is simply not up to the singing part the role demands. The rant song, as I always think of it, loses a lot because of it. When I first heard he was playing the title role I remember thinking they must have gotten a stunt voice for him, but they didn't. The movie suffers for it. Carter does OK. Again I think it suffers for an abandonment of the maniacal in favor of goth sensibilities, but that could be a personal problem. The big surprise for me was Rickman, who, though not great, rose to the role of the judge very nicely. As for everyone else...adequate...I guess.
So...as I said. I didn't hate it. It could have been far better.