Amazon.com
After years of rumors, it turns out that Tim Burton was the perfect visionary to film Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, Stephen Sondheim's Broadway masterpiece, and the result is a macabre and moving musical movie as enthralling as anything Burton has ever done. The show's mix of gothic horror, Grand Guignol, very dark humor, and witty and beautiful music never was the stuff of traditional musical comedy, but it's a powerful work, and perhaps the richest of the late 20th century. In the movie, Burton's frequent collaborator, Johnny Depp, plays Todd, a wronged man whose lust for revenge drives him to murder (an 19th-century legend who has been traced to a real-life barber). Helena Bonham Carter, another Burton mainstay, is Mrs. Lovett, the barber's partner-in-unspeakable-crime. It's no surprise that Depp is an excellent choice to convey Todd's brooding intensity and volcanic rage, but he can also sing a score that is so challenging it has often played in opera houses (though not with the same style as the Broadway original, Len Cariou, and he occasionally lapses into pop style). Bonham Carter is small of voice and lacks the humor of the original Broadway Lovett, Angela Lansbury, but she sings on pitch, in rhythm, and in character at the same time, which is no small feat for a Sondheim show. Aficionados will regret the loss of certain musical passages--"The Ballad of Sweeney Todd" is just an instrumental overture and the chorus is gone altogether, among others--but the reassuring presence of orchestrator Jonathan Tunick and conductor Paul Gemignani ensures that the music feels right and sounds great. And the film's depiction of a Victorian London hellhole--with cinematography by Dariusz Wolski and costumes by Colleen Atwood--also looks and feels right.

The excellent cast is filled out by Alan Rickman as the villainous Judge Turpin, Timothy Spall as his seedy Beadle, Sacha Baron Cohen (Borat) as a rival barber, Jamie Campbell Bower as the young lover Anthony, Jayne Wisener as his object of affection, and Ed Sanders as the young Toby. For fans of Tim Burton and Johnny Depp who don't think they like musicals, Sweeney Todd should be a revelation (though not for the squeamish, as the gore is intense and completely appropriate). For fans of Broadway and Sondheim, it's hard to imagine getting a better adaptation than this. The fact that there's no newly composed Oscar-bait song sung by a Josh Groban-type over the end credits only makes it better. --David Horiuchi

Customer Reviews

Please Hollywood, enough with the loud soundtracks!!!
Again, Hollywood insists on blowing out our eardrums with overly loud, intrusive scores. Yes, I know this is a musical but one should be able to make out at least some of the lyrics over the music.
I really wanted to like this movie as I truly enjoy Depp's, Carter's, Rickman's and Burton's past works but... it was so boring!!! I couldn't stand to watch the whole thing... shut it off about halfway through. What an annoying waste of my time.

Darkly delightful
The atmosphere is typically Burton, applied to a deserving work. Depp sings well enough, better than expected, and brings sypmpathy to the monster. Well done and enjoyable.

Oh God, another Burton-Depp collaboration
While Tim Burton gets evermore maniacal spraying red paint everywhere, Johnny Depp once again proves that his only British accent is London-cabbie-meets-Keith-Richards, despite his love of doing Brits over and over again. Even with those gripes aside, we endured an hour of this, hoping it would get better... but it never did.

Here's what surprising, since I have been a fan of some of Burton's films:
1. The music was repetitive, whiny, unpleasant and just awful.
2. The principal actors can't sing well enough to carry it off.
3. The audio was weirdly wrong - it was hard to understand what people were saying despite the corny accents.
4. The set design looked bland rather than engaging.
5. The effects were lousy - miniatures were obvious from the opening title shots. Even my wife noticed that.

I hope this is the last time that the Burton-Depp combo rocks out to 18th century England....