Very good, but....

Rating: 7/10 (27 November 2010)

Tim Burton's take on Stephen Sondheim's Broadway show, probably the most explicitly gory grand guignol musical ever made, has a lot going for it: great songs, excellent performances, very good singing (unexpectedly so from Depp), and Burton's strong visual sense at work.
I confess to being irritated, as more than once before, by Burton insisting that he knows better than the source material. Having said that, he makes a fair fist of this particular project.
It is extremely grisly, and that may matter to you: I found that the blood was fairly comic book-ish, and easy to not take seriously.
More critical is the fact that the protagonists are essentially unsympathetic. While one sympathises with why Todd becomes this character, and while one is saddened by the tragedy of what happens, the absence of any redemption (or hope thereof), unleavened by an actual resolution for Johanna, means that there is little satisfaction for an audience to hang onto at the end (even Toby settles matters by dropping to the same level of those he has learnt he despises).
Does this outweigh the good things along the way? For me, it was a close thing, but my enjoyment just about outweighed my disappointment at the absence of humanity at the end.