.: Roberts' Reviews - Movie Reviews :.

Before going into the screening of the Tim Burton vision of Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, I felt as prepared as I have ever been prior to an opening. Two weeks before the curtain went up on the theatrical version, I was sitting at the Broadway production which was touring through Toronto, Canada. I didn't have a real desire to see the musical. Not that I have anything against musicals per se, just that this version had all ten actors playing their own instruments with nary a set change and I am of the generation that needs to be stimulated with costumes and lights and big dance numbers. Throw in the fact that the stage production was more of an Operetta and you can imagine me looking for the Bud Lights I should have smuggled under my jacket by the third high-pitched chorus.
But for all my disappointment with the stage production, it did give me the insight into the theatrical version staring Johnny Depp (Sweeney) and Helena Bonham Carter as Mrs. Lovett in what promised to be a bloody dark experience.
Sweeney Todd is a story about revenge. Sweeney (nee Barker) was a barber in England with a beautiful wife and a newborn daughter. They lived a happy life and if not for the envious intentions of one Judge Turbin (Alan Rickman) they might just have lived Happily Ever After. Turbin coveted Barker's wife Lucy and with the aide of his henchman Beadle Bamford Barker is beaten and send away on trumped up charges leaving Lucy and daughter Joanna to the Judge.
Fifteen years go by and Barker changes his name to Sweeney Todd and returns to Fleet Street in search of revenge against a judge and the city that betrayed him. Upon his return, he meets two individuals that will become instrumental in his plans. First, a young sailor named Anthony Hope that sees Joanna from her bedroom prison window and immediately falls in love with her and next, Mrs. Lovett who will be Sweeney's accomplice throughout most of the film.
Mrs. Lovett, owns her own meat pie business. The worst meat pies in London, if you asked her. She quickly recognizes Sweeney as the former Mr. Barker and is able to fill him in on the circumstances surrounding his family. As Lovett fiercely tells without reservation, Lucy was driven mad upon Sweeney's exile and drank arsenic in her grief. Meantime, Joanna was brought up by Judge Turbin whose infatuation with the now voluptuous young woman has lead him to the belief that they will marry.
With this information in toe, Sweeney starts his barbershop above Mrs. Lovett's pie shop and it is here where the carnage will unfold. First victim is a rival barber named Pirelli (Sacha Baron Cohen) who also recognizes Sweeney as the former Mr. Barker. Before Perelli can sing the word "Borat", he is beaten with a tea pot and becomes the first of many, many victims.
Like any good serial killer, you have to figure out how to dispose of the bodies as not to be caught and Mrs. Lovett has the perfect plan as meat is hard to come by and meat pies made of people might just rejuvenate her floundering business. So, as Sweeney awaits the opportunity to shave his revenge into Turbin's throat, he goes on a rampage of drifters and vagrants that end up recycled in Lovett's shop.
Sweeney Todd is a marvelous achievement in sound and visuals that will have you tapping your toes while squirming minutes later in blood soaked disgust. Director Tim Burton has put together maybe his finest film to date. Without question, it is his most accomplished achievement considering the pressures of the adaptation (Composer Stephen Sondheim was on site every day with watchful eyes and with heavy influence into his musical's adaptation) and the adventures into a musical which was something neither he nor most of the cast had been involved with previous.
But you wouldn't know if based on the ease to which the film is directed. Burton uses his familiar style (see Batman through Beetlejuice through Edward Scissorhands) where the sets are bleak and the characters are well development and as strange as your weirdest relative on a diet of Prozac and helium.
All the visuals in the world however could not pull the film together had it not been for the main characters and their ability to sing through the script and Depp and - to a lesser degree but with relative success - Carter do an admirable job in keeping us interested in the vengeful proceedings. Both do not have the range of the Broadway cast, but the characters as they are portrayed, don't require a Live at the Met performance.
For those that will sit through the songs for the hope that the screen runs red with blood, rest assured there are plenty of bodies stacked up in Lovett's basement. Sweeney goes Jack the Ripper on London and the blood squirts and splashes at a pace that would get a high five from Jason Voorhees.
For all it's parts, Sweeney Todd stops from being a complete masterpiece due to the some of the songs being sung at such a rapid fire pace that you can't exactly follow along unless you have subtitles, but it is a minor distraction in what is a major accomplishment.
By the time Joanna gets rescued from the asylum and Sweeney gets his opportunity for revenge, you have sat through a musical adaptation that will have most leaving the theatre thinking they enjoyed something they thought they couldn't.
In short, a bloody good time.