World's Best Cannibalism Musical

Rating: 5/10 (20 December 2010)

Benjamin Barker is sent abroad to a penal colony when a corrupt judge covets his lovely wife. Returning to London fifteen years later with a burning desire for revenge and a hatred of humanity, he reinvents himself as Sweeney Todd, a barber who likes to shave his customers perhaps a little too close ...
The legend of Sweeney Todd was born out of the Victorian penny dreadful novels - a gruesome grand guignol story of a maniacal barber who slits his customers' throats, and the charming Mrs Lovell who grinds the bodies into sausages and serves them up to the unwitting customers in her pie shop. For whatever reason, Stephen Sondheim decided to turn it into a musical, with mixed results. There aren't really any showstopping numbers and the score is a little forgettable, but the storybook does a good job of telling the tale and creates lots of memorable characters. As a fairly straight adaptation of the musical the movie has the same flaws and virtues, but where it really scores is in the fantastic production design by Dante Ferretti (The Adventures Of Baron Munchausen, The Name Of The Rose), ace costume design by longtime Burton collaborator Colleen Atwood and the sweeping stylised photography throughout. Burton and his talented collaborators create a mesmerising warren of Cockney backstreets, washed out with grey filters, granite and cobbles, where everything from the silver streak in Depp's hair and the puffy purple makeup around Bonham Carter's eyes seems to fit perfectly. Whilst as a story and a musical it may have limitations, as a movie it never looks anything other than great, and the cast all give it some fine gusto (Depp seems to play the whole movie with his right eyebrow raised). There are two numbers in particular that work very well - the amusing A Little Priest, when Mrs Lovell hits upon her culinary masterstroke, and the cheerful By The Sea, where the dreamy bright colours contrast sharply with the drabness of Fleet Street, and Depp's catatonic bewilderment counterpoints his fiery misanthropy. The main problem however is the tone, which I don't quite understand. The story was always intended to be horrible fun, as over-the-top as possible, and yet both musical and film take it too seriously too much of the time. Burton's doesn't shy away from all those gruesome throat slashings, and Mrs Lovell's death by immolation is a Horrible Highlight, but the tone veers away constantly from comic to tragic, especially in the last half-hour, making the picture far too stodgy and grim. Compare it with Frank Oz' Little Shop Of Horrors, which is just as gruesomely evil but is hilarious throughout, and where the numbers are a constant wry commentary on the action. Sondheim is famously protective of his works, and whilst this is a good movie it's easy to see why - musical theatre is and always has been a spectacle, where the experience itself is enough for most people to accept bad music or dumb stories. A cinema audience is not so forgiving, and the subtle atmosphere a picture creates is often its most crucial asset. This is why Andrew Lloyd Webber has never made it big in the world of movies, and thank heaven above for that. All in all, this is an interesting flick whose only real limitation is its source material, but for all its blood and thunder it never really comes alive. Burton has made much better films though (Edward Scissorhands and Sleepy Hollow in particular), so if you've only seen this make sure to check out his rich back catalogue.