Psychotik Mouse

I'll come right out and say it, I live Johnny Depp and Tim Burton. I have yet to be disappointed in anything they've done together. Tim Burton is a fabulous (if dark) director, and johnny Depp... well... he's one of the best actors out there in my mind.

Which is why it pains me somewhat to say that Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street was perhaps one of the worst movies I've seen in a long time. Which is doubly hard to say because what made it awful wasn't the actors or the style of filming, it was just because it was so darned bloody.

The story (based on the Stephen Sondheim production) is about a barber who has it all, a successful business, beautiful wife, and baby daughter. It all gets taken away from him when a local judge (played by Alan Rickman) has him arrested and shipped off to Australia. With Todd out of the way he can then go about the business of trying to seduce Todd's wife.

We learn about all of this at the beginning of the movie as Todd is returning to London where he learns that after he left his wife poisoned herself after being brutally raped, and his baby daughter (now 15) has been adopted by the same judge that had him falsely imprisoned.

Naturally Todd decides to take his revenge. He teams up with the woman running the business below his. Mrs. Lovett (played by Helena Bohnam Carter) sells "the worst meat pies in all of London", but comes up with a scheme to help Todd dispose of his victims' bodies while providing her with a cheap source of meat for her pies.

The music is well done, if a bit macabre. Some of the songs are darkly humorous, like one in which Todd and Mrs. Lovett are espousing the type of meat different types of people might make. Poet's, for example, are no good because "They're boring and you don't know where they've been." We're then treated to a musical montage of Sweeney Todd singing about his revenge as he slits the throats of his patrons.

The movie is incredibly bloody, as I mentioned before, but the thing that makes this movie one to pass up is that there's not enough background on Sweeney Todd to be able to think of him as a sort of anti-hero. In fact, we really don't care about him during the entire movie and all I could think about was how crazy he and Mrs. Lovett were. The movie is an exercise in misery, and not even the jaunty show tunes pervading the movie could make up for it. It might have gone better had it not been a musical, but I somehow doubt it.

Overall, I'd say just don't bother seeing this one as it is just an exercise in pain and misery. I don't think it's bad acting, or even bad directing, I just think the story didn't translate well from a Broadway musical to a movie.

Overall grade: D, could be much better but I've definitely seen worse (*cough*Balls of Fury*cough*)