Not bad, but I hoped for more

Rating: 6/10 (29 March 2016)

"Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street" is an Academy Award-winning American movie from almost 10 years ago and another collaboration between Tim Burton and Johnny Depp. The atmosphere is occasionally similar to "Edward Scissorhands", equally dark, but lacks the comedic moments completely and instead tries to deliver as a musical. And this works successfully to some extent. Some of the songs are fine to listen to while others are fairly forgettable. Helena Bonham Carter and Sacha Baron Cohen played together in "Les MisÃ©rables" (which I liked a lot more) too a couple years later. This may just be a personal criticism, but I thought the really dark subject and plot was not working well as a musical. It brought something in there that made it difficult for me to really take the developments seriously.
Apart from that, I agree with the Academy that the film mostly delivers from the visual perspective. The nomination for Johnny Depp may have been a bit too much I guess. "Sweeney Todd" runs for almost 2 hours, but the story is maybe only good for 100 minutes and as a consequence the film drags on several occasions. Nonetheless, thanks to the atmospheric touch, this film is a success and the positive outweighs the negative, but just slightly. I give the movie a thumbs-up, yet a cautious one. It did not deliver as much for me as I hoped it would, especially from the horror perspective. I myself wasn't scared once.