Sweeney Todd: the movie - two early reviews

[julian_craster]

Interesting that the posters for the movie give no suggestion that this is a musical - how many teenage shock horror fans will walk out when
the characters start SINGING (and in a non-pop/rock style- no rappers or hip/hop junk here - and how uncool is that ! )

A US musical, set in London, and filmed at Pinewood Studios UK

Variety
From: http://www.variety.com/
By TODD MCCARTHY

Both sharp and fleet, "Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street"
proves a satisfying screen version of Stephen Sondheim's landmark 1979
theatrical musical. Where much could have gone wrong, things have
turned out
uniformly right thanks to highly focused direction by Tim Burton,
expert
screw-tightening by scenarist John Logan, and haunted and musically
adept
lead performances from Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter. Assembled
artistic combo assures the film will reap by far the biggest audience
to see
a pure Sondheim musical, although just how big depends on the upscale
crowd's tolerance for buckets of blood, and the degree to which the
masses
stay away due to the whiff of the highbrow. In all events,
DreamWorks-Paramount and Warner Bros. have a classy and reasonably
commercial delicacy on their hands.

The composer-lyricist's bulging shelf of awards and peerless
reputation
notwithstanding, Sondheim's own shows have never invited much
bigscreen
interest, no doubt due to the general feeling that they are works
from and
for the head rather than the heart. The two films that were made from
his
musicals, "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum" and "A
Little
Night Music," were, to put it kindly, hardly representative of the
effect
the shows had onstage.

Some Broadway purists will gripe about how the film of "Sweeney Todd"
omits
and abridges certain songs, reshapes the drama to a degree or just
can't
measure up to their cherished memories of Angela Lansbury's wondrous
performance as Mrs. Lovett. But it will be hard to argue that Burton
and his
cohorts have not imaginatively reconceived the piece as a work of
cinema;
strictly in film terms, "Sweeney" is seamless, coherent and vibrant,
with
scarcely a trace of "Broadway."

The flip side of these virtues is that the immaculately designed
settings
and lack of breathing room lend the film a claustrophobic feel that
underlines its status as an art work. Other qualitative
considerations to
the side, this aspect makes "Sweeney Todd" most recall the much-
debated
"Evita" among screen versions of post-'60s musicals.

Eschewing trademark mannerisms and flights of fancy, and yet fully
imprinting the film with his signature, Burton strongly delivers the
dark
core of this story of a lower-class London barber whose thirst for
revenge
against a venal judge gives birth to a prodigious serial killer. Yarn
has
questionable real-life origins in the 18th century, but came to
prominence
as a story and a stage drama in the mid-19th century, and in 1973
served as
the inspiration for the Christopher Bond play that attracted
Sondheim's
attention.

As Sweeney Todd (Depp) sails up the Thames with a young man, Anthony
(Jamie
Campbell Bower), having escaped from prison in Australia, his bitterly
ironic commentary in "No Place Like London" firmly defines the side
of the
city the film will occupy; in production designer Dante Ferretti's
superb
realization, it is a squalid place of narrow streets and dingy rooms.
Evoking old Hollywood horror pics, Burton has made something very
close to a
real black-and-white film, as Ferretti's sets, the extensive CGI
backgrounds, Dariusz Wolski's lensing, Colleen Atwood's costumes and
the
pale makeup are synchronized to permit only traces of bold color --
mostly
red -- to accent a world dominated by shades of gray, blue, white and
black.

Sweeney Todd returns with the single-minded intention of killing Judge
Turpin (Alan Rickman, as deliciously sinister as fans know he can
be), who
locked him up on false charges so he could make off with the younger
man's
lovely wife Lucy and young daughter.

Installed in a room above a dismal pie shop run by his slovenly long-
ago
landlady, Mrs. Lovett (Bonham Carter), Sweeney has his desire for
payback
sharpened by the news that Lucy killed herself out of distress and
Turpin is
now romantically inclined toward Sweeney's now-teenage daughter,
Johanna
(Jayne Wisener), who coincidentally catches the eye of the naively
romantic
Anthony (Campbell Bower's screen future seems assured, thanks to
looks so
striking that they distract one from looking even at Depp).

Sweeney's murderous career commences to the detriment of a fellow
barber,
charlatan and con artist Adolfo Pirelli (Sacha Baron Cohen),
following a
public musical "duel" to determine who in London can administer the
quickest, closest shave. Cohen, in his first screen appearance since
"Borat," makes the most of this brief but expansive supporting role,
broadly
playing the braggart showman with, as required, two different accents
and
highly colorful costumes.

Mrs. Lovett, a widow who signals her enduring love for Sweeney by
having
carefully kept his collection of gleaming razors through the years,
makes a
quick moral adjustment to her boarder's bloody enterprise by using his
victims' flesh in her meat pies, which brings her business roaring
back to
life.

All the while, Judge Turpin and his malevolent henchman Beadle
Bamford (an
unctuous, gruesomely toothsome Timothy Spall) frustratingly elude
Sweeney's
clutches; once they're on to him and Anthony, the virtuous Johanna is
thrown
into an asylum, while Mrs. Lovett begins entertaining delusions of
happily-ever-after domestic bliss with Sweeney.

Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler fashioned a darkly effective morality tale
out of
this descent into madness, one Logan has elegantly whittled down to
two
hours from three to satisfy the more concise specifications of the
screen.
Dialogue is present when needed, but the vast majority of the text
and drama
is conveyed via the songs, which themselves have sometimes been
shortened --
with verses removed -- with little loss in impact.

Burton stages the singing sequences with precision and fluidity; as
most of
them are intimate one-or-two-person affairs and not production
numbers in
the traditional sense, he approaches them as he would dramatic
scenes, in
degrees of closeup and with an emphasis on content and forward
movement.
Music has always played a major role in his films (notably in his
previous
pic, "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory") and this represents one
happy
instance of a film made by a director without stage experience that
genuinely serves the intentions of the original piece.

Heavy curiosity will center on how Depp, in particular, manages the
vocals
(all the actors performed their songs themselves). The answer is,
perfectly
well, thank you. The ever-resourceful thesp doesn't take the half-
measure of
sing-speaking in the manner of Rex Harrison or Richard Burton, but
puts
across his many numbers with an agreeable voice that effectively
registers
the lyrics' import.

The same goes for Bonham Carter, a similarly untrained vocalist, who
works
in the same vein of successfully acting her role through song. There
is
deeply buried emotion and charged motivations in both characters that
Depp
and Bonham Carter consistently express, and the eerie similarity of
their
looks -- the endlessly dark eyes, cascading black hair, delicate
facial
structure, sunken cheeks, exaggerated lips, slight stature --
accentuates
the characters' complicity; at one point, they are both so pale, they
look
like they've been done up in whiteface.

Another effective connection is made between Sweeney and his mortal
enemy,
Rickman's hanging judge; both express the view, and justify their
predisposition for meting out severe punishment, that all men have
done
something in their lives that make them deserve to die. It is
certainly true
of the two of them, no matter that one is the antihero, and the other
the
villain, of the piece.

The narrow, heavily deterministic and, yes, gushingly bloody nature
of the
show (more than enough to warrant its R rating) serves to mute the
exhilaration to a degree, but producers Richard Zanuck, Walter Parkes
and
Laurie MacDonald (and Sondheim, who had approval of the director and
actors)
deserve credit for ensuring that everyone involved on the picture was
the
right person for the job.


---------------------------------------------------

Hollywood Reporter
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street


It's 19th century London and everyone is singing, but when arterial
blood sprays from the opened throat of Signor Adolfo Pirelli, you
know this is no "My Fair Lady."

Stephen Sondheim's award-winning musical "Sweeney Todd: The Demon
Barber of
Fleet Street," a savage tale of cannibalism, madness and serial
murder, is
now Tim Burton's "Sweeney Todd." The show couldn't have fallen into
better
hands. With realistic gore replacing the stylistic bloodletting in
the stage
version, "Sweeney" loses some of its darkly comic tone -- not a lot
of
laughs here except the nervous kind.

More akin to Burton's "Sleepy Hollow," where heads rolled like so
many
bowling balls, his "Sweeney Todd" places its emphasis on Grand
Guignol and
the deeply human story of twice-lost love and the horrifying
destructiveness
of revenge.

It took two studios, DreamWorks and Warner Bros., to share the
considerable
risk of making and marketing this tragic tale that defies so many
conventions of the American musical. It will be a significant
challenge to
find a substantial audience despite the advantage of the Burton and
Sondheim
brands along with a cast that includes Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham
Carter and
Sacha Baron Cohen.
a..
a.. "Sweeney Todd" comes from an obscure British melodrama -- which
might or
might not have been based on true 18th century events -- about a
deranged
barber who slit the throats of customers and his landlady who served
the
victims up in meatpies.

Sondheim's 1979 show took place within the context of the Industrial
Revolution and its rampant corruption and avarice. More satiric opera
than
musical, "Sweeney Todd" blended together a number of theatrical and
literary
modes, making the show at once Brechtian, Dickensian and Jacobean.
Sondheim
acknowledges the influence of the film music of Bernard Herrmann even
as he
throws in a Viennese waltz or music hall burlesque.

Burton and writer John Logan take all this as a gift, which is then
filtered
through Burton's own unrepentant sense of the macabre. Except for
imaginary
sequences or flashbacks to happier days, the film has a monochromatic
look
with color drained from cityscape. Depp and Carter dress mostly in
stark
dark clothes with black circles around the eyes, almost as if the
figures in
Burton's "Corpse Bride" served as models.

In choosing actors who can carry a tune as opposed to singing-actors,
Burton
has wisely gone for the tragic, emotional heart of the story,
narrowing the
focus to Sweeney; Mrs. Lovett, the meatpie lady, plagued by
unrequited love
for Sweeney; and Toby (Edward Sanders, who has a striking voice), the
street
urchin who assists but is innocent of the pie's ingredients.

Depp is the movie's heart and guts. His Sweeney, nee Benjamin Barker -
-
having escaped false imprisonment in Australia after 15 years -- is
ruled by
revenge upon his return to London. Presented with his razors, which
Mrs.
Lovett (Carter) has lovingly guarded all these years, he grasps a
blade with
his firm right hand. "At last, my arm is complete again," he thunders.

His homicidal rage centers on Judge Turpin (a dour Alan Rickman), a
vile
sexual predator who had Benjamin arrested by henchman Beadle Bamford
(a
smarmy Timothy Spall) so he can steal Benjamin's wife (Laura Michelle
Kelly)
and baby daughter. Sweeney learns that his wife poisoned herself and
Turpin,
who took the baby as his ward, lusts after the now grown woman
Johanna (a
wan Jayne Wisener). Anthony (Jamie Campbell Bower), a young sailor
who
rescued Sweeney at sea, now longs to do likewise for Johanna on land.

Thus, a triangle of obsessed characters emerges. Depp plays Sweeney
as a man
so focused on death, so committed to blood, that he has lost all
touch with
life. Carter's amoral Nellie Lovett, her hair apparently combed with
an egg
beater, is herself obsessed with Sweeney. She imagines an impossible
life
with him without realizing he is unmoored from any reality in which
this
might take place.

The judge, hungering after young women, is the film's major
disappointment.
Onstage, the tormented man struggled with his obsession, longing to
regain
his goodness. Here he is a stock melodramatic villain who lacks any
ideals
other than those of self-interest, though Rickman uses all the tricks
in his
actor's bag to coax a human being out of the caricature.

Sanders' Toby is a street kid who turns out to possess a moral
compass the
adults so sorely lack. Baron Cohen as Pirelli, the barber's first
victim, is
surprisingly muted. Perhaps the requirement to sing has neutralized
Cohen's
usual outrageousness. Burton doesn't seem to know what to do with
film's
ingenues, Wisener's Johanna and Bower's Anthony, so they are largely
ignored.

The musical numbers ooze with Sondheim's audacious wit and scathing
lyrics.
A lullaby conveys menace. A waltz celebrates conspiracy. Cynicism
runs
through all the songs' social critique.

The blood juxtaposed to the music is highly unsettling. It runs
contrary to
expectations. Burton pushes this gore into his audiences' faces so as
to
feel the madness and the destructive fury of Sweeney's obsession.
Teaming
with Depp, his long-time alter ego, Burton makes Sweeney a smoldering
dark pit of fury and hate that consumes itself. With his sturdy
acting and
surprisingly good voice, Depp is a Sweeney Todd for the ages.

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
A DreamWorks-Paramount (in U.S.)/Warner Bros. (international) release
and presentation of a Parkes/MacDonald production and a Zanuck Co.
production.
Produced by Richard D. Zanuck, Walter Parkes, Laurie MacDonald, John
Logan.
Executive producer, Patrick McCormick. Co-producer, Katterli
Frauenfelder.
Directed by Tim Burton. Screenplay, John Logan, based on the musical
"Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street" by Stephen Sondheim
and Hugh Wheeler from an adaptation of "Sweeney Todd" by Christopher
Bond.

Sweeney Todd - Johnny Depp
Mrs. Nellie Lovett - Helena Bonham Carter
Judge Turpin - Alan Rickman
Beadle Bamford - Timothy Spall
Adolfo Pirelli - Sacha Baron Cohen
Johanna - Jayne Wisner
Anthony Hope - Jamie Campbell Bower
Toby - Edward Sanders
Beggar Woman - Laura Michelle Kelly

Camera (Deluxe color), Dariusz Wolski; editor, Chris Lebenzon; music
and songs, Sondheim; production designer, Dante Ferretti; supervising
art
director, Gary Freeman; set decorator, Francesca Lo Schiavo; costume
designer, Colleen Atwood; sound (Dolby Digital/DTS/SDDS), Tony Dawe;
supervising sound editor, David Evans; re-recording mixers, Tom
Johnson,
Michael Semanick; visual effects supervisor, Chas Jarrett; associate
producer, Derek Frey; assistant director, Katterli Frauenfelder;
casting,
Susie Figgis. Reviewed at Paramount studios, Los Angeles, Nov. 29,
2007.
MPAA Rating: R. Running time: 117 MIN.

[Dave Rattigan]

All the indications are that the film is a definite winner.

I was very worried when I heard this announced, as I am a big fan of the Sondheim musical, and the thought of Burton butchering it (pardon the pun) was too much. However, it has received some RAVE reviews, and I have every reason to believe it does justice to the brilliance of Sondheim's original conception.

I also hear it is pretty gory, which is fine by me. It's a show that really works when made as grisly and bloody as possible, in the tradition of Grand Guignol. Can't wait for this to be released in the UK.

[batman]

I loved the stage version so I am looking forward to this.

Bats.

[Merton Park]

Just seen it.

Very theatrical, typical Tim Burton, very dark, but generally very good. Helena Bonham-Carter is excellent, Johnny Depp hardly ever gives a bad performance, wonderful again, same as Alan Rickman and Timothy Spall, also Sacha Baron Cohen is good.

Very bloodthirsty, certainly not for kids but if you like musical theatre you will love this. Sets are wonderful, really looks good and it is well put together.

Out of 10 I would give it a 7.

[batman]

Originally Posted by Merton Park Just seen it. Very theatrical, typical Tim Burton, very dark, but generally very good. Helena Bonham-Carter is excellent, Johnny Depp hardly ever gives a bad performance, wonderful again, same as Alan Rickman and Timothy Spall, also Sacha Baron Cohen is good. Very bloodthirsty, certainly not for kids but if you like musical theatre you will love this. Sets are wonderful, really looks good and it is well put together. Out of 10 I would give it a 7.

Thanks Merton, I may just make the effort to go and see this.

Bats.

[Nita St. James]

Ooooh it was bloody good fun. I say, a good bit of spurting/gushing blood.

Johnny Depp was great as the meanacing, very troubled man who was consumed with hate and revenge.
I dislike musicals for the most part, but this was so off kilter, so bloody violent, it just added to the "fun", I had a good time. I am glad I wasn't heading straight out to dinner afterwards though.

Helena Bonham Carter's Mrs. Lovett had some scathingly good witty lines, and Helena Bonham Carter has a great singing voice. She is more the villian than Sweeny if you start taking stock of her. Meatpies and other dasdardly deeds. Ah what unrequired love can do to a person.

Sweeny was after revenge, he just got carried away with himself. Mrs. Lovett was out for herself.

One of the lighter scenes, well the only one perhaps, is a daydream Mrs. Lovett has about her and Sweeny off on vacation and eventually getting married. It is a very Burtonesque scene, very whimsical and macabre.

Great sets and costumes, they seemed more real than in some Burton films.

Ed Sanders, the kid that played Toby, the orphan Mrs. Lovett takes in to help around the shop, is good.

I am almost getting tired of Alan Rickman as "the villian" in just about every movie he is in.

I enjoyed the hell out of this movie, and I'd say it is one of Tim Burton's best films.

One thing I loved about the movie alot of it seemed monochromatic, the colors were so subdued and the blood was such a nice bright splash/touch of color.

[dremble wedge]

Originally Posted by Nita St. James Ooooh it was bloody good fun.

I really enjoyed it and I'm completely unfamiliar with the stage version.

Johnny Depp was very good but I thought Helena Bonham Carter was even better (although Mrs L is the showier part, hence Angela Lansbury's Broadway plaudits).

[Nita St. James]

Originally Posted by dremble wedge I really enjoyed it and I'm completely unfamiliar with the stage version. Johnny Depp was very good but I thought Helena Bonham Carter was even better (although Mrs L is the showier part, hence Angela Lansbury's Broadway plaudits).

I thought Helena Bonham Carter was fantastic. And I was so surprised she didn't get an Oscar nomination.

Her singing was great, and she really seemed to be having a hell of a good time with the role too.

[samkydd]

Originally Posted by Dave Rattigan All the indications are that the film is a definite winner.

A friend of mine who is quite a well read critic and regular cinema goer, and will travel quite far to see a good film or play, told me "It's pants!"

[orpheum]

Originally Posted by samkydd A friend of mine who is quite a well read critic and regular cinema goer, and will travel quite far to see a good film or play, told me "It's pants!"

Your friend is entitled to his opinion like everyone else.However i found it to be a thoroughly enjoyable way of spending two hours.The lad who played Toby was just great.