Very much to my surprise....

Rating: 8/10 (1 January 2008)

I am one of those Sondheim devotees. "Sweeney Todd" is up there with my favorite Sondheim works. I've seen it a number of times on stage including some very fine productions.
I have never liked a single film I ever saw by Tim Burton, not one. I have always thought Johnny Depp the most overrated actor of his generation. In the light of this I was not at all pleased to find out that Tim Burton would be bringing Sweeney to the screen and with Depp in the title role.
I thought that I would give this movie a miss but my curiosity got the better of me. Despite my justified misgivings, the film simply works and surprisingly well at that. Burton's cinematic treatment comes closer to the core of the story than any stage production seems able to do. It does this at the expense of the music. In the theater the music dominates in all it's brilliance and beauty. In the movie with its under sung performances, the music serves its function without overshadowing the elements of story or the characters themselves. Depp (sounding much like David Bowie) and Bonham Carter, while vastly different from any Sweeney and Mrs. Lovett you've ever heard, do make it work by giving character driven performances rather than musically informed ones. Mrs. Lovett, indelibly stamped by Angela Lansbury's whackiness becomes far more real with Helen Bonham Carters more nuanced treatment which still manages to maintain a certain comic edge.
It might not be my ideal screen version; I still believe stronger voices are required, (Alan Rickman in particular barely makes it), but its a well made very forceful piece of cinema.