Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007)
Review by Jeffery J. Timbrell
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street is like the Titus Andronicus of Musicals.
Fans of Greek Tragedies tend to either love or hate Titus, because it is an excessive experiment in lunacy that spends most of its time parodying and ripping the guts out of the genre.
Fans of musicals either love or hate Sweeney Todd for similar reasons.
Most of the time, musicals are sort of like a genre of storytelling dedicated to MEATLOAF music. They’re stories told by melodramatic songs that usually have titles that sound like expressions on Hallmark cards. In a musical every single emotion or achievement is raised to epic or preposterous levels, as Joss Whedon demonstrated in his musical episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, with a character coming out of a dry-cleaners joyfully dancing down the street declaring “THEY GOT THE MUSTARD OUT.” So yeah, if you love Meatloaf, if you can’t get enough Meatloaf, than musicals are probably a holy genre for you. If you hate Meatloaf, there is a good chance that a lot of musicals will have you running to stick your head in a chipper shredder to block out the noise.
Created by Stephen Sondheim (West Side Story, Gypsy) Sweeney Todd is like Satan’s musical.
Sweeney Todd is about a young man named Benjamin Barker (Johnny Depp) who was wrongfully sent to prison in Australia for fifteen years, stripped of his family and his life he returns to his home to wreak revenge on those who stole everything from him. And that’s the birth of one Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet street. A monster who slits the throats of men and bakes their bodies into meat pies which sell quite successfully on the market.
A good deal of the Sweeney Todd play is spent slicing throats and baking people into pies, or singing songs about slicing throats and baking people into pies. It’s a murderous revenge fantasy, a gorehound’s delight, a commentary on greed and class war, a hilarious black comedy, and a romantic tragedy all in one. Its got songs and dance numbers, but the motivation isn’t upbeat or enthusiastic, it’s not bombastic like Broadway, it’s vicious and fiendish right down to the core. It places the audience right in the shoes of a genuine madman and there is nothing in the play that even remotely attempts to redeem any of his crimes or actions. Sweeney Todd is a raucous celebration of depravity, villainy and brutal, bloody revenge. The songs aren’t like the average musical with the sing-a-long catchy and easy tunes, instead they have a deliberately more crazed and manic tone, often with quickly paced and complicated rhymes and a lyrical structure with a purposefully over-wrought style of writing to add a sense of satire to the actual structure of the song, and not just the subject matter.
Naturally I love Sweeney Todd. It’s good, dirty fun. A theatrical nasty that outraged and enraged, won awards, was praised and equally condemned. That’s how you know something is good. Any crap can sedate the masses, hell, junk food can sedate the masses, but if it’s pleasing many and whipping others into a frenzied uproar, then it’s probably destined for greatness.
So here’s the million dollar question: Does the movie stand up to the play?
Let me put it simply: A few of the songs have been cut out completely, many are reduced in length and chopped for time. Fans of musicals will likely be turned off by a lot of Todd’s infamous violence that Burton deals in buckets, and fans of gory movies will likely be turned off by all the singing going on. That being said Sweeney Todd is easily the best collaboration between Johnny Depp and Tim Burton since Ed Wood and the best Tim Burton movie since A Nightmare Before Christmas, if not my favorite Tim Burton movie ever.
I think Burton’s movies can be redundant, I think Edward Scissorhands is nice but I wouldn’t count it as a classic, I think many of his films have great ideas but not a lot of meat on their bones. I think a lot of Burton’s movies don’t have a solid third act and often feel too rushed getting from one imaginative set piece to another.
Sweeney Todd, like Ed Wood is lavishly constructed with a sense of fanatical appreciation for the material. I think Burton has done a masterful job bringing Todd to the bring screen, I think his style of film-making compliments the play perfectly, I think his casting was brilliant. Johnny Depp delivers a freakishly scathing Todd, a sort of Punk Rock Brother’s Grimm, exactly one-part fairy tale, exactly one-part The Misfits. He’s iconoclastic and everything about him, from his appearance to his songs is a contrast between two different elements. Todd’s loss of his own soul on the path to his vengeance and the echoing madness in his skull over losing his family creates a character who is at once crackling with emotion and yet emotionless, seething with hatred and cold as ice. He carries a frigid intensity that is cartoonish and creepy and reflected in everything from his costume design to his make-up. It’s a well-constructed performance in an excellent movie.
Sweeney Todd is a strange, weird and beautiful thing. It is not going to appeal to everybody, but nothing good ever appeals to everybody. The people behind the camera and in-front have to be commended for taking a serious risk here. I think even the studios knew that there was a very good chance they were going to tick off and drive away both of their largest demographics with this movie. This is a bloody horror musical that’s more violent than many of the horror films released this year, that doesn’t have a wonderful ending, bright happy colors or a shiny, happy message during the Christmas season. And while some critics will hiss at the Studio heads for not selling the film as a musical, hoping to try and ‘fool’ the horror audience with the promise of a little seasonal blood-shedding? Hey, they deliver the blood in buckets.
As a horror fan I was quite pleased.
As a Sweeney Todd fan I was delighted.
Popularity: 12% [?]
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