Bloody Wonderful!

Rating: 9/10 (25 December 2007)

First, I will get the most obvious (and redundant) sentiment out of the way: "Sweeney Todd" IS Tim Burton's best film since "Ed Wood"; and, had "Ed Wood" never been made, "Sweeney Todd" would be his best filmperiod, bar none, no arguments. Sure, it's based on the long-running Stephen Sondheim musical, but this film version is Burton's own distinctive animala marriage of his trademark Gothic visuals paired with richly fleshed-out characterizations. Imagine Herschell Gordon Lewis with a budget and a proclivity for song, and you've got it.
I have always appreciated Burton's eye for distorting typical American facades (the Gothic carnival of "Batman"; the eerie pastel caricature of suburbia in "Edward Scissorhands"; the literal Candyland of "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory")the man knows how to put his own distinctive stamp on a picture. However, many of the scripts he's chosen to helm come up short in character development (usually more comfortable to present the "outside world" as a string of shopworn clichés), save always for a protagonist who is some sort of socially maladjusted outcast. The result has been films that are aesthetically pleasing (certainly wonderful to look at) yet emotionally hollow.
Yet in the character of Sweeney Todd (played by Johnny Depp), Burton finds his greatest outcast alter-egonot only does Depp dissolve into the role, but as the film progresses, we see Burton's own socially awkward persona fade into the characterization, as well. What could have come off as nothing more than a filmed version of a popular musical instead becomes a complex character study of the motives that drive a man to madness; Todd inhabits a world so grey and dark that the upside of things is impossible to recognize (until it's too late).
That being said, the setup is rather simple: in flashback, we learn that Todd was happily married to Lucy (Laura Michelle Kelly), only to have her and his child, Johanna (Jane Wisener), stolen away by the lecherous Judge Turpin (Alan Rickman). Silenced and hardened by 15 years of imprisonment under a bogus charge, Todd is released and returns to London with vengeance in mind (his first song is a misanthropic screed against the city that sets the tone for the remainder of the film). He quickly comes across Mrs. Lovett (Helena Bonham Carter), the proprietor of a roach-infested meat pie emporium; their relationship develops into a mix of business and pleasure, as Todd's victims become the main ingredient in the pies. But never does Burton give Sweeney an exit into an easy love affair with Lovettin a great montage, she fantasizes about traveling the world with the earnings from her rejuvenated business, with a stoic, frowning Sweeney en tow.
Now, I have never been a big fan of movie musicalsin many cases, I have gone out of my way to avoid them. Songs from the Disney school have always struck me as redundant re-iterations of things the audience already knows, serving as little more than fodder the kids can sing to death on the car ride home (did any parent leave "The Lion King" unscathed by choruses of "Hakuna Matata"?), while big-budget studio productions have always struck me as overblown and pretentious. Something daringly controversial ("South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut") or conceptually innovative (the Burton-produced "Nightmare Before Christmas") can more easily earn my favor, and "Sweeney Todd" is impressive not because you'll be humming the songs on the way out of the theater, but because the music blends so seamlessly with the spoken dialoga way of further developing character and plot that puts us in within a jubilantly macabre world. Burton knows this terrain well, and frequently hits notes of pitch-perfect black humor when we least expect it. And just as surprising is a subplot involving a vagabond boy who falls for Sweeney's now-teenaged Johanna; what at first seems like padding eventually becomes the innocent-love counterpoint to the demon barber's own path of vengeance, desolation, and lost hope.
As with "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory," Burton favors the streets of Britain, and makes even the aristocratic areas gleam with squalorthe whole production looks like a postmodern Hammer flick, with blood spraying in a deep-red, exaggerated manner. "Sweeney Todd" also retains the director's own Gothic cutie-pie fashion nods (Depp often looks like a sinister variant on Edward Scissorhands, with Bonham Carter invoking a live-action manifestation of the Corpse Bride), and the characters' appearances actually complement their color-drained lives. And the performances...well, they're the stuff of genius, simply put.
"Sweeney Todd" is not only Burton's second-best film, but one of the best of 2007.
8.5 out of 10