Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007)

[Torgo]

***1/2 out of ****.

I'm not a big fan of musicals though I still applaud the tons of artistry & hard work that go into making a successfull one.   I've heard about the British musical Sweeney Todd for years in that it was the bloodiest stage musical in history. I think that Angela Lansbury was a prominent cast member in the 70's in the Ms. Lovett part in which Helena Bonham Carter inhabits and just plain OWNS in Tim Burton's 2008 film rendition.

I think the thing that bugs me the most about the majority of musicals is that the movie's plot or momentum just plain grinds to a halt in most cases as the musical sequences seem shoehorned in at times. This doesn't happen in Sweeney Todd as the singing parts (which constitute I would guess at being about 70%) are natural extensions of the plots, the characters and actually give away important information that keeps the movie moving forward.

The cast was uniformly excellent with Johnny Depp killing in the title role without going too over the top which would have been very easy to do in a film like this.  Helena Bonham Carter continues to prove that she's easily one of the greatest and most talented actresses of her generation playing Ms. Lovett.  With her frazzled hair, pale skin, cleavage and dime store style dresses, she makes Ms. Lovett quite memorable.   

Alan Rickman , Timothy Spall and Sacha Baron  Cohen (a.k.a. Borat, Ali G.) are also most excellent.

The most pleasant and surprising thing is that all of the cast actually sang in their own voices instead of having someone else dub their singing parts. From what I gathered from the DVD extras, Helena Bonham Carter and Johnny Depp really had to work extra hard on learning how to sing as they never had hardly at all in their life.  Helena has quite a beautiful voice it turns out.

Set decoration is stupendous, the blood plentiful and flowing all over the place(so much so that they had to use alternate camera angles during one particular throat slitting scene constituting 5 seconds of film to avoid an NC-17 in the states) and the music overseen by Stephen Sondheim himself all add up to a winner.

The reason why I knocked off a half of a star is that there are a few nagging structural/pacing problems at a few spots that could have been fixed/tightened up, but this is really close to getting a 4 star rating from me nonetheless. 

[HappyGilmore]

I haven't seen this yet, but may pick up the dvd this weekend.  I heard Sascha Baron Cohen knocked it out of the ballpark and did a great job with the role.  Honestly, I'm not a big fan of him.  Never liked Ali G, never saw Borat. 

I like Burton's work, and Johnny Depp is usually brilliant, same with Helena. 

[BeyondTheGrave]

I saw this one in theaters with a friend and with both loved it even though we don't like musicals either. I heard Johnny Depp wasn't going to to take the part because he really didn't think he could sing but Tim Burton convinced him otherwise. Thankfully to because I can't really see someone else in the part.

[WingedSerpent]

I ended up liking more than I thought.  Its sort of a musical for people who don't like tradtional family musicals

[indianasmith]

I watched this with my wife last night.  I was REALLY tired, and tranked out on allergy meds, so I dozed through some of the middle part of the movie . . . . but I did catch all of the ending.  But my impressions were . . . . it was WAY over the top on the blood.  Wow!  I'm a bit of a gorehound, but those spraying guysers from slit throats were more like something out of a Monty Python sketch!  The costuming and casting were great, the story depressing (of course).  Helena Bonham Carter is one of those "oddly attractive actresses".  By and large, it wasn't as good as I'd hoped, but that may have been due to my own befuddled condition while trying to watch it.  My wife, a music teacher, enjoyed the musical aspect but was turned off by the gore.

BTW, at Crimelibrary.org, you can read the account of the REAL Sweeney Todd.  Pretty spooky stuff!

[HappyGilmore]

Watched it this morning.  Just got done, in fact. 

Well done flick, songs were decent and moved the story along.  Ending was like, "Woah."  People can say what they want about Burton, but he's made some favorite flicks of mine.

[ER]

I was a little disappointed, tell ya the truth.

[Hammock Rider]

I liked the gin swilling kid and the song about what various professions might taste like. The look and atomosphere were excellent, Burton knows how to take you to a different world. The ending was great, I'm glad they didn't "Hollywood it up" ,as far as I know. If Burton does another musical I'd watch it. Maybe he could bring to life "Stop the Planet of the Apes I wanna get off" as featured in the Simpson's episode where Troy McClure marries Selma.

[HappyGilmore]

I liked the gin swilling kid and the song about what various professions might taste like. The look and atomosphere were excellent, Burton knows how to take you to a different world. The ending was great, I'm glad they didn't "Hollywood it up" ,as far as I know. If Burton does another musical I'd watch it. Maybe he could bring to life "Stop the Planet of the Apes I wanna get off" as featured in the Simpson's episode where Troy McClure marries Selma.

That'd be completely awesome.

I'd wonder if he'd touch "Rocky Horror Picture Show."  I'm guessing he'd have Johnny Depp as Frank N Furter, and Helena as Magenta.

[Ash]

I saw Sweeney Todd last night and thought it was ok.
There was a lot more singing than I expected but that didn't detract from the film at all.
Some of the singing was quite hard to understand and it seemed like every other song, I had to activate the subtitles.

And this film was bloody as hell! 
Kinda reminded me of Kill Bill in the way wounds gushed blood.

My favorite part was with Sacha Baron Cohen as Pirelli.
I loved the scene when he & Todd face off against each other in a barber contest in front of a large crowd.



I wouldn't recommend watching this movie if you're in a bad mood.
It's quite depressing and Johnny Depp doesn't smile once the entire time.

Other than that, I thought it was very good and give it 3 out of 4 stars.