Not quite even a near miss...

Rating: 5/10 (4 April 2008)

I just finished watching Sweeney Todd with Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter. This is my all-time favorite Broadway show, and I had high expectations. I had seen the show on Broadway twice: once from the orchestra pit where my friend was playing in the 2nds, and once from 3rd row center.
Sadly, Tim Burton has really missed the target with his version. He made a fundamental mistake: with Stephen Sondheim's music, a director needs singers first and actors second. Sondheim is a powerful composer: he has a better sense of rhythm, of rhyme, and of words than any other composer out there; indeed, any musician needs to bring his "A" game to a Sondheim piece. I've played piano in 2 Sondheim musicals: "Company," and "A Little Night Music." Both were some of the toughest music I've ever played. In "Company," there is a song called "Being Alive" where the pianist is playing either 10 or 11 note chords at the song's climax, and the music is a fast moderato, and the chords are played as eighth notes. (I've always harbored the suspicion that Sondheim hates pianists.) Because of this fundamental lack, Johnny Depp - for all his acting talent - cannot bring the character to life. And therein is the single biggest shortcoming of the film: the audience is supposed to sympathize with Todd; we want him to succeed, even though that means murder. We realize that there is a no-win situation for Todd, but we care for his pain, and even though the outcome is inevitable, we agree to travel along with him to that outcome. We sympathize with the wronged man, and want to see the revenge take place. I never felt that with Depp.
And that's because it requires people that are completely comfortable with, and people that are completely confident of, their voices. Combine that with a tough score to begin with, and you will start to see where the limitations of Burton's new film will start to show themselves: Depp and Carter could not bring the emotion of Sondheim's score to the screen, and consequently, the movie falls flat, leaving you with little more than a horror film set to music. Nowhere will you see Todd's descent into madness as he realizes that his dream of revenge is taken away; nowhere do you see Mrs. Lovett's conniving and convincing. All you see are a brooding man and woman who seems to want him. When Todd snaps ("Epiphany") you do not feel his pain, and during what is the show's funniest number, (A Little Priest") Burton completely drops the ball, cutting many lines from the piece, and staging it in a very unfunny way: many of the laughs are lost amongst the singer's vocal limitations. Sad, that, because when I saw it on Broadway, the actor's had to project to the last row, yet still get the nuances in and had the audience rolling. If they could do that in a live theatre, they could certainly get that on the big screen. Burton actually misses the boat twice: once in "A Little Priest," and once in "More Hot Pies," which opens the second act, and is barely in this piece at all. One thing he did that I consider unforgivable is that he removed the vocal trill from the character of Johanna's piece "Green Finch and Linnet Bird." Hearing a soprano that's simply capable of singing one is wondrous; hearing one do it in performance is heavenly. Here it doesn't happen at all. Imagine my letdown when that part of the song passed, and no trill...
And that brings up another point with this particular musical- the singers are required to be strong singers. It's no wonder that the only two actors that were ever really able to bring the character of Todd to life were Len Cariou and George Hearn: both have a cavernous set of pipes, and the ability to sing the half-steps and chromaticisms this piece requires. A sad thought is that the only singer that had the vocal strength the part requires in the entire movie was the actor that played Toby- a 12 or 13 year old boy who is obviously a trained singer, and can bring that strength needed to make his big number ("Not While I'm Around") the most worthwhile of the movie. Hell, using Sasha Baron Cohen as Pirelli the Barber is a sin: the part calls for an Irish tenor...
Lastly was the look of the film itself: simply desaturating the color 40 per cent or so does not a dark movie make; indeed, on Broadway, there was no desaturation at all, and they achieved a darker feel than the movie had. Additionally, there was the Broadway equivalent of a Greek Chorus in the play- They sang the Prologue and Epilogue. Sadly, they are not in the movie at all.
Unfortunately, I have been awaiting this movie for many years. I had hoped that a quirky director like Burton might be able to bring the pathos, the empathy, and the underlying despair of the show to the screen. Alas, this did not happen. Perhaps that is the limitations of a director trying to direct his first musical. Fortunately, I still have the VHS tape of George Hearn and Angela Lansbury doing this show live in Los Angeles. That means I will still get to see it the way it should be done. If you can find a copy of that performance, see that first: you will at least then know how the show is supposed to play.