Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
	Director: Writer: Cast:   Genre Release Date: Rating:	Tim Burton John Logan (screenplay) Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter, Alan Rickman, Timothy Spall Musical Out Now 18
Synopsis: After hard years in exile for a crime he didn't commit, Benjamin Barker now Sweeney Todd, returns to London to find his wife dead and his daughter in the hands of the evil Judge Turpin. In his anger, Sweeney goes on a murderous rampage on all London, with the help of Mrs. Lovett, he opens a barber shop in which he lures his victims in with a charming smile before casually ending their life with a flick of his razor across their neck. But not one man killed, nor ten thousands men can satisfy Sweeney's lust for revenge on those who've caused his years of pain.

Review:

It must be hard for someone like Tim Burton to find himself going so tragically out of vogue. Being as moody and stylistic as he likes, it doesn’t pay off anymore. Perhaps bending to the whims of Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter is a big part of the problem, but one way or another Sweeney Todd is proof positive that he’s lost it.

Don't let the abundance of style fool you. It offers little else.

After suffering the ear-gratingly tuneless, rhymeless, unbearable singing of a cast who seem to think that remaining as expressionless as possible at all times constitutes an air of nefarious intention, the audience is reduced to a morbid, gelatinous goop of warm discontent. Seriously – go to the cinema and watch this dreadful, grey mish-mash with an auditorium full of people who enter the room congratulating The Nightmare Before Christmas and leave it feeling depressed and cheated, reflecting on how bad Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was. If you enjoy going to the cinema, you’ll be one of them.

What’s particularly tragic is the excellent, dark fantasy story that was once, presumably, at the core of Sweeney Todd. Without the lamentable, back-of-the-throat crooning and unintentionally camp performances this could have been condensed into an hour’s worth of highly entertaining criminal horror. Which brings us to Mr Burton’s huffy toy throwing about the adult rating his latest celluloid malfunction landed itself.

I love a good horror, and there can never be too much gore, sex, violence or any combination of the three. But what we have here is a gratuitous show of directorial petulance – switching suddenly from a (droning) sing-song musical – to the extent that there’s very little dialogue to be heard – to a gushing and realistic straight razor across a random throat.

Get used to these two. It's a showcase for their egos and, by extension, Burton's.

The dead body is dropped, crushingly and equally believably, onto concrete a storey below. Had this been the latest Jason flick, or The Burning 3, such cringe-inspiring horror pragmatism would have shone beautifully. What ensues, however, is an arbitrary and random series of lifeless murders, for no reason other than to shock – which they don’t. Out of context as it is, there’s no doubt that Burton knew, from the outset, this would upset the classifications board – and it’s this inherent sense of superiority, “I’m Tim Burton and I’ll do what I like”, that permeates Sweeney Todd and robs it of any possible audience gratification.

And for a film so potentially stacked with action and excellence, the pace is aggravatingly slow – to the point of moving in reverse. Bonhem Carter is apparently happy to be out-performed by her own deep cleavage while Rickman – poor, fallen Rickman – is forced to call upon stony grimaces left over from Harry Potter to claw his way through the emptiness of character. Johnny Depp plays Johnny Depp, as you’d expect – take that statement as you like it.

The crumbling, colourless grimace of old London Town is ripe with broken charm, which is where the few moments of enjoyment can be gleamed from the painful slog of self-congratulation that creaks from a small, bored cast and one overbearing director.

 

 

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