All image and no substance

Rating: Null/10 (24 October 2008)

I was hoping Tim Burton was improving after his last film "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" impressed me. It was a great improvement over his previous films, "Planet of the Apes", and "Sleepy Hollow".
But Burton goes back to his old ways in "Sweeney Todd". It's the same problem I had with Burton's previous films, there's too much focus on art direction and not enough on the characters. Johnny Depp is a great actor, but he's useless in this and boring. He's not amusing and eccentric like he is in "Charlie".
The songs pretty much all fall flat as well. None of them particularly stand out, they all sound like generic Broadway tunes, sometimes it's hard to tell a song in the movie from the last one.
The art direction is good. It's gloomy as only Tim Burton does it. But it's not worth watching for the dull characters and lifeless plot. None of these Hollywood actors are very good singers either.