Movie review: Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street

by Alex Bentley

Attention moviegoers – Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (or just Sweeney Todd, if you prefer) is a full-on musical. It’s also full of gushing blood. Why am I telling you this right away? Because if you were unaware of the original musical (not out of the realm of possibility since its most famous incarnation occurred over 25 years ago) and based your decision to see the film solely on the commercials/trailers or the fact that it was a new film from director Tim Burton and Johnny Depp, it might come as a bit of shock to you to have 99% of the “dialogue” be singing and to have Todd (Depp) slicing open the throats of his customers.

Actually, to call Sweeney Todd a musical is a bit of misnomer, too. As Stephen Sondheim, the writer/composer of the original score, noted, because actual spoken dialogue is all-but-absent, it’s “virtually an opera.” This is evident right off the bat, as we witness the re-christened Sweeney Todd (he previously went by the name of Benjamin Barker) returning to London from an exile not of his choosing. The first words lyrics out of his mouth are about what a hellhole London has become, and Burton does his usual best to prove what an apt description that is. The London Todd returns to is such a dreary and dank place that anybody might feel the desire to take a razor to a person or two (or themselves). But Todd has much more of a reason to be feeling murderous than just the weather; his banishment was at the hands of Judge Turpin (Alan Rickman), who had become smitten with his wife and had Todd/Barker arrested on spurious charges. The fate of his wife and child, not to mention his false imprisonment, sets into motion his desire for revenge on Turpin. And if a few other people happen to become victims along the way, so be it.

Ah, yes, the victims. There is a noticeable lack of sympathy for any of Todd’s victims, who for the most part have done nothing wrong except exercising poor judgment in their choice of barbers. Their throats are cut open in great crimson spurts and they are then unceremoniously (and in unflinching detail) dumped onto a stone floor. Oh, yeah, did I mention that they’re then ground up and put into Mrs. Lovett’s (Helena Bonham Carter) meat pies, a business directly below Todd’s flat? Actually, her “meat” pies are so disgusting (pre-Todd) that filling them with the meat supplied by Todd actually seems to be an improvement. An interesting note about the blood, though; it’s not presented like the close-to-real blood and gore movie audiences have become accustomed to in modern films. Rather, it’s the type of fake movie blood you might see circa-Bonnie and Clyde or The Wild Bunch. As such, it actually serves as a remove from the hideousness of what Todd is doing. He is, after all, the movie’s “hero,” so we can’t be thinking too badly of him, can we?

What of the singing, you say? Depp, despite his protestations to the contrary, is actually quite a good singer (which makes one wonder why his singing was dubbed in Cry Baby). And the fact that he can not only sing but also sing in a Cockney accent is all the more impressive. His best performance comes courtesy of the showstopper, “My Friends,” which is about, of course, his razors. Bonham Carter doesn’t come off quite as well; her subdued take on Mrs. Lovett’s introductory song, “The Worst Pies in London,” seems to have been the wrong choice. She gets better in “God, That’s Good” and “Not While I’m Around,” but still pales in comparison to Depp.

Supporting players make less of an impression. Rickman isn’t quite up to usual standards as a bad guy, and his only real chance to shine as a singer comes in “Pretty Women,” where he's upstaged by Depp in a glorified duet. Sacha Baron Cohen (yes, Borat) makes an appearance as rival barber Signor Adolfo Pirelli, and even gets a chance to sing. Two things detract from his performance, and both are part of the same thing – his Italian accent. In my screening, Cohen was greeted with laughter the moment he opened his mouth, despite not singing about anything inherently funny (not serious, mind you, but not comical, either). I can only attribute this to the Borat factor, as audiences might naturally assume that anything Cohen does (especially in an accent) is funny, even if it’s not meant to be. However, Cohen’s singing is also darn near unintelligible thanks to the accent, so his contribution to the film as a whole is negligible (save for a shockingly tight costume that does nothing to hide his, um, assets).

It’s best not to concentrate on little things like plot continuity or convenient timing in Sweeney Todd. The spectacle is the singing and the blood, so if a certain character shows up at just the right time or other previously important characters disappear with no resolution, well, that’s okay because we’re being treated to such a fabulous display of Grand Guignol. And that’s exactly what this film is: graphic, amoral horror entertainment, with the emphasis, courtesy mostly of Depp, on entertainment. Depp delivers another stellar starring role that carries the film even when others threaten to bring it down. Even though it’s far from your typical holiday movie, it does give you plenty of red, and what could be more Christmas-y than that?