Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street | Review

King of the macabre and the morose, Tim Burton finds lineage with Stephen Sondheim’s stage version of a story that minces spewed body liquids with articulated venomous promises. Reuniting for the umpteenth time with Burton, Johnny Depp displays grievance over loss and an unsatiable thirst for payback in a far from taut perf that should win him end-of-season accolades. While Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street scores big on production value in costume, make-up and song departments, this musical revenge flick with a sequestered sense of humor might have worked great on Broadway but remains a difficult proposition for unabridged film platform.

After proving he’s got the facial cosmetics to wear a pirate’s grimy golden grin, Depp looks great in a skunk-fashioned mop-do and pasteurized face print which at some point in the timeline savorously switches over into the blood-droplet look a la Christian Bale’s American Psycho character. Along with his serial killer accomplice Mrs. Lovett (Burton’s female muse Helena Bonham Carter), the range of characters that are the scope of this London-set tale are meticulously detailed enough to each merit toy store figurine status. The pairs’ introductory scenes, and the meetings between Benjamin Barker aka Sweeney Todd and his other chance encounters offer more to be excited about than: the flux of character interactions in Burton’s previous failed exploits in Big Fish, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and the unforgiving Planet of the Apes. Sacha Baron Cohen’s character of Pirelli is the perfect excuse as the film’s first victim.

Retaining much of the character instilled within the original stage songs, John Logan’s screenplay about desperation leading to desperate acts decimates midway. The text might be cluing audiences into new character motivations and character’s frame of mind, but like one unexpected big thrust of a switchblade the problematic lies in the number of times the film breaks into song-mode. Every narrative decision is attached to the song-mode limb, and though the actors offer better than formidable singing perfs that are au natural, much of it remains stilted and non-engaging just like the subplots featuring a pair of Todd’s understudies. At least when Depp’s character paints at least one part of the town in red (love how he disposes of lifeless corpses from his top floor trap) it shuns almost every single traditional film musical before it – it is safe to say that the stage play would been a riot.

The dark content of the film is matched by the almost pitch black coat production designer Dante Ferretti gives to the objects and people found in the foreground – the contrast can be instantly witnessed (feels like someone turned the switched the lights in the movie theater) in a sequence where Bonham Carter’s Mrs. Lovett flirts with the notion of living happily married forever. Unfortunately Burton’s metropolis is extensively designed in CGI backgrounds – all these elements are subpar to the numerous sequences shot around the barber’s chair.

What this translates into is a dark account of the cruelty of the system, class structure ultimately (like crushed bugs) seals the fate of those less fortunate, while there are pleasurable portions to this timely holiday musical release, the best sounds come not from the vocal cords but from the sound of jugulars slit. Just like any Burton film, Sweeney Todd is an ambitious undertaking that will certainly find its fans, but this arguably still belongs to a class of Burton films, namely his more recent non-exploits that fail to provoke the same amazement and amusement we’ve easily found with his earlier films.

Rating 2 stars