Stylish, if a little too musical

Rating: 6/10 (17 June 2008)

I think the biggest problem I have with Sweeney Todd is with the concept itself, that of a horror musical. There's something just weirdly incongruous about people singing about killing and cannibalism, you know? Maybe it's just me; I like musicals, and I like horror movies, but I don't know if the twain should meet.
That said, the time-honored premise of Sweeney Todd is diabolically gruesome, and I mean that in the most positive way. Todd is the former Benjamin Barker, a barber who's been exiled from nineteenth-century London by a corrupt judge, who then swooped in and took Barker's wife from him for good measure. Fifteen years later, Barker, now known as Todd, returns to the city, but his wife Lucy, raped and driven mad by the judge (Alan Rickman) has killed herself, and Todd's daughter Johanna is the judge's ward.
Todd opens a barber shop above a bakery owned by a Mrs. Lovett, who's soon encouraging Todd to exact his revenge. They hatch the perfect plan: She needs meat, he needs revenge, so they work in concert, since Todd's moral compass has spun off its magnetic axis. Everyone wins! The movie was directed by Tim Burton, and his imprint is noticeable right from the start, with a rivulet of blood coursing through well-worn machine gears over the title cards. When you think of Tim Burton, you think of stylish, don't you, not placid, or heavily plot driven, or over-the-top action. You think of the visual images, the freewheeling, indelibly intriguing imagination that brought you Beetlejuice, Edward Scissorhands, and the Corpse Bride. Here, Burton is incredibly successful; the set pieces are magnificent, as is his use of color. When Todd slashes a throat, vibrant reds attack the screen in stark contrast to the staid, mostly black backgrounds (and the pallid complexions of the Londoners, of course).
Prior to the film's release, there was more than a little bit of nervousness about the casting of Johnny Depp, a longtime Burton collaborator. This was to be an adaptation of the Stephen Sondheim stage presentation, a version of the old tale that - surprise - required actual singing. Could Johnny Depp lend enough gravitas to the dark role of Sweeney Todd? Sure, as far as actual acting went, but could he even carry a tune? Turns out he can, although I wouldn't sign him to any recording contracts. He's an okay singer; let's leave it at that. But he's fantastic, naturally, as the demonic barber - who, let's be frank, looks like Edward Scissorhands' dad or perverted uncle.
Also proving to be a decent singer was Helena Bonham Carter as Mrs. Lovett. I don't know what it is about Bonham Carter, but she almost always looks like she's playing a strung-out crack addict. Must be the saucer eyes and the paleness. At any rate, she's a real treat, as usual, as the wicked, duplicitous Gothic baker of unique meat pies.
The movie is 116 minutes long, but if you cut out the musical numbers you'd be left with perhaps 45 minutes. True, many plot points are expressed via song, but it's not long before those songs feel forced, inauthentic, and superfluous. Granted, the songs themselves are thematically downbeat, not of the happy-joy variety, and granted, they're there to move the plot along, rather than inhibit it, but therein lay a problem. When the actors sang, they sang loudly. When they were merely speaking, they spoke softly. And this wasn't like 1940s musicals, where the songs are telegraphed ahead of time; the actors would go from talking to SINGING to talking to SINGING and I spent much of those 116 minutes adjusting the volume. Seriously - the dialog is so softly spoken it's very difficult to hear, even if the sound's turned up, and what's more, the characters all have nearly unintelligible (to me) Cockney accents that drop vowels, consonants, punctuation, you name it. I needed subtitles.
So although the movie didn't quite do it for me, I can appreciate what it was trying to accomplish. Indeed, judging from the many accolades it received, it was quite successful. If you're looking for an ultraviolent horror show filled with singing, you will not be disappointed, although I can't imagine there'd be much competition for that dubious honor.