"Bloody" Brilliant...get it?

Rating: 10/10 (20 January 2008)

It's been a well-known fact for years that the Burton/Depp duo is like Pixar: it simply can't go wrong. To prove this, Tim decided to cast Johnny in something that neither have tackled before: a Tony-award winning Sondheim musical.
Yes, I said it. Burton and Depp in a musical.
Ah, but what would a Burton movie be if it didn't have a nice, stylistic twist to it? The musical is Sweeney Todd, the story of a wrongfully imprisoned man who wants revenge on the man who ruined his life, Judge Turpin (played by Alan Rickman). Now, Turpin not only raped his suicidal wife (Laura Michelle Kelly), but then kidnapped his daughter (beautiful newbie Jayne Wisener). After Sweeney is found by a young sailor named Anthony (Jamie Campbell Bower), he returns to London to try and kill the wicked judge. He returns to his barbershop to find the frantic, yet lovely Mrs. Lovett (played wonderfully by Helena Bonham Carter) who agrees to help his on his vengeful mission.
The story deals with things that you wouldn't normally expect from a musical (rape, kidnappings, bloody killings, torture, cannibalism) and is a far departure from the Disney Channel atmosphere of Hairspray. However, this doesn't make the movie any less good. In fact, it could be the one movie that would make men like musicals! The blood effects aren't incredibly realistic, but is very stylistic instead. While most of the atmosphere in Sweeney is that of black and white, the bright intensity of the red blood is still incredibly shocking.
Depp is a better singer than I thought he would've been. Carter is phenomenal in every possible way as Lovett. Sanders, Wisener, and Bower are each fantastic, as are Rickman, Spall, and Cohen. Casting was brilliant with this movie.
It gets slow only on rare occasions, only to set up another fantastic musical sequence or bloody throat-slitting. Undeniably Burton, Sweeney Todd is a fantastic saga for fans of dark, thrilling horror movies or extravagant Broadway musicals!