The rut

Rating: 3/10 (26 January 2008)

Tim Burton is stuck in a rut. His film Sweeney Todd  The Demon Barber of Fleet Street looks like Willie Wonka, which looked like Sleepy Hollow, which borrowed much from Ed Wood and the Nightmare Before Christmas and Edward Scissorhands. When he goes outside of his oeuvre of desaturated colors and Gothic pallor his films are usually awful  Planet of the Apes, anyone? So is there any reason that I shouldn't have been bored with his dreadful Sweeney Todd? I have already seen this movie several times in its different Burton/Depp incarnations, and it isn't getting better with age. I loved Vincent, his first animated short. I enjoyed Beetlejuice and Edward Scissorhands. I thought Ed Wood was his most complete film. But since then Burton has been in a rut, and I don't want to be in there with him anymore.
Burton is, at best, a creator of atmosphere. His ability to stage stories has declined, and he has never been much as a provider of action. Sweeney Todd's story is surprisingly weak  a demented barber, unjustly transported, returns to London to wreak vengeance on those who wronged him. His ally is an equally demented chef (Helena Bonham Carter) who will make use of the bodies of those he slays to make meat pies. So the story is basically the Texas Chainsaw Massacre as a musical told from the point of view of Ed Gein. Most of Todd's victims had absolutely nothing to do with the injustice enacted upon him or work into his plans for vengeance. The bloodbath might have been more lighthearted had Burton and Depp not worked so assiduously to develop Todd's burning internal rage at the judge, but not the society as a whole. As it is, it makes me wonder why Todd is expending such effort to slaughter innocent men. Not that I felt any emotional reaction one way or the other.
One of the largest problems with the film is the aching pace at which the plot moves. There are, at best, six main players to the storyline  how it takes more than two hours for these somewhat somnambulant performers to finally come together is something I witnessed but cannot justify. Depp glowers and simmers as the angry Todd, and his singing voice is the best of the leads, but the performance, like his Willie Wonka, lacks heart. Alan Rickman is the evil judge that Todd desires to wreak his vengeance upon, and their interactions are perfunctory and without fireworks. The only time the film actually moves is when Todd faces down an imperious Italian barber with a secret, played by Borat's Sacha Baron Cohen. But then Cohen is dead, and we are back into the swill of 19th century London.
The music is also a problem. I am certain with trained Broadway singing stars that it had its moments on stage, but in the film it is simply flat, exasperatingly expository, and every time the characters break into song the film loses any momentum it had.
All of Burton's films have the same atmospheric quality, and it is very well evoked here, but I found this film to be a boring disappointment. Tim, climb out of your rut.