Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street

In this life, there are three things I really, really love: 1.) gory horror movies, 2.) musical theatre, and 3.) the work of Tim Burton. When I heard that Tim Burton and his constant companions Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter (yes, I know she's his wife) were going to be headlining the film adaptation of the darkly funny Broadway musical Sweeney Todd, I was excited, to say the least.

So was it the perfect mix of everything I love? Well, that, as it turns out, is a complicated question, one I'll try to answer as simply as possible while, you know, actually giving you a movie review. (Aside: other than the general plot of the musical, I am unfamiliar with the original Broadway play and have done nothing to enlighten myself, so no Broadway snootiness or elitism to be found from here on out.)

The title character of Sweeney Todd: the Demon Barber of Fleet Street is, unsurprisingly, a barber. Once a bright, optimistic young man with a beautiful wife and baby daughter, he was imprisoned by a corrupt judge who wished to get rid of him to pursue his wife. Upon being released from prison, Sweeney is told by the new owner of his former home that the judge has done the unspeakable to his wife (which lead to her death), and to add insult to injury, the judge has taken in his daughter and raised her, trapped in his home. Sweeney decides it's time to get some bloody revenge.

In a perfect world, this would be pretty linear: guy gets out of prison, guy swears revenge, guy goes about getting it. But truthfully, it takes Sweeney so long to get down to the killing (and disposing of the bodies by having his landlady/partner in crime make them into meat pies) and there are so many meandering storylines (including the boy that Sweeney befriended on his trip home coincidentally finding and falling for Sweeney's daughter, Sweeney's partner's growing and inexplicable love for him, an urchin who becomes the assistant of the landlady, and something involving Sasha Baron Cohen in pants so tight you can see his package at all times, which will do nothing for the guys in the audience hoping that they can retain their heterosexuality through a musical as long as it has loads of killing) that nothing major really happens until the last half hour or so, and by then you're wondering when it'll all be over. There is a twist ending, but I wouldn't call it worth the wait.

I think the problem here is that I did, in fact, get what I want, but like I wouldn't mix Pepsi, goldfish crackers, and Smirnoff Ice into a bowl and expect the results to be delicious and satisfying (not while sober, anyway), I shouldn't have expected three things that I enjoy but don't naturally blend together to just work. Horror fans will be disappointed by the lack of action, repetitiveness of the songs, and cartoonish, stylized violence, while musical fans will probably be put off by the dark, cold, stifling tone and buckets of gore. It's not a bad movie, exactly, but like most of Tim Burton's stuff, it's definitely got its own niche.