Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007)
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007) 6/10
I hate musicals, thus the relatively low rating for Sweeney Todd. If you love musicals, this rating gets a +2 bump. Sweeney Todd is both a great movie, and a disappointing movie. Great, because it looks gorgeous. In classic Tim Burton style, the mood , feel and cinematography brings back fond memories of Edwards Scissorshands and other vintage Burton films. The film is perpetually drenched in a dark gloomy palette, that juxtaposes well with the drips of crimson blood that appear ever so often. This is a violent, bloody musical and that in itself gives the film some brownie points. But fret not, it is not a grisly sort of violence, more a family friendly Burtonesque sort of violence. Technically, the film is impeccable, with gorgeous mise en scenes and a show stealing performance by Johnny Depp as the title character.
The weakness of the film is that it is a musical. Characters sing their dialogue. To me that was incredibly grating, but if you like musicals, your mileage may vary. Helena Bonham Carter seems typecast into playing gothic looking women (think Bellatrix Lestrange in Harry Potter) and i felt that she was overshadowed by Depp in every scene they were together. Plus, Depp and Carter don’t seem to have much chemistry. The rest of the film follows a painfully predictable premise that you could anticipate what was going to happen early on. While it does get some props for electing a dark ending, overall the premise and the script was predictable and largely banal. Obviously when you make a musical about a murderous barber it inevitably gets compared to similar revenge flicks (Sympathy for Lady Vengeance) or musicals (Once, Chicago , etc) and Sweeney Todd is neither a great revenge flick nor is it a particularly good musical. It is however a visually mesmerising film which deserves much of the critical acclaim it has gotten. However, i generally don’t like musicals, so Sweeney Todd was good but it did not wow me.
