good movie, disappointing vocals

Rating: 8/10 (2 February 2008)

I quite enjoyed seeing the movie last night, being a devoted Sweeney, Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter, Sacha Baron Cohen and last but not least Tim Burton fan.
The filming, set, costumes and acting were all brilliant and it was a pleasurable experience for me. EXCEPT for one thing. I'm sorry, but the two main actors were NOT equipped to sing their roles. They simply do not have the voices for it. So all my favorite songs went completely flat and sounded positively high school musical. WAY to Disney for me! These roles need meat on the bones, darkness of sound, a range of colours in the voice, resonance! (and then you could easily hear all the auto tuning going on.. dreadful)
Why on earth didn't they get proper singers to sing for the two main characters? Do everyone HAVE to sing themselves in films just because it was done in Walk the line (a lot better I must say)? Others were better, I was not overly fond of Jane Wisener's vibrato (dreadful, but easily fixed by a proper voice teacher) but I thought Ed Sanders Toby was wonderful, Sacha murdered the role of Pirelli (no pun intended), Timothy Spall did well and should have been allowed to sing more of his role (cut a lot), and Alan Rickman was as gorgeous as ever. He can sing! Jamie Campbell Bower was also a lovely, lovely Anthony.
Conclusion: one star off for each of JD and HBC vocal performances. The rest a full house!