Sweeney Todd

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street

Directed: Tim Burton
Starring: Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham-Carter, Alan Rickman

Based on Stephen Sondheim’s musical, a man seeks bloody revenge after being sent away to prison for a crime he didn’t commit so a rich guy could take his wife and daughter.

While I knew it was a musical, there was a lot more singing than I expected. After a while, I was surprised when there was actual talking compared to singing. One problem I have with musicals is sometimes I have no idea what they are saying. When they sing, I miss words. I blame it on my hearing problem where I read lips to make up for my lack of complete hearing. When someone sings though, lip reading doesn’t work so well. I did get the gist of each song, but I know there were some things that I missed.


The overall look of the movie was awesome, down to Johnny Depp almost looking like a ghoul. It made sense since he had been in prison for many years and I felt that time spent locked away killed his will to look like a living human being. I didn’t understand Mrs. Lovett also looking like the walking dead. I went with it at first since maybe she was so depressed at her horrible meat pies and no customers, but as she became more successful with her partnership with Todd, she continued to look like a zombie. No one else around her looked like this (with the exception of Todd) so it was very out of place.

The dark, greyness of the city did make the blood stand out, and there was a lot of gushing blood. I didn’t have issue with all the spurting blood. I found people landing on their heads from the second to the first floor more disturbing to watch again and again. Even if they were dead, it was just icky!

The story itself was funny in a darkly humorous way, but I didn’t buy that Sweeney Todd would return just for revenge and never seek out his daughter that he found out was alive or really try to find out where his wife was buried. The ending was the only one that would fit with the mess that Todd and Lovett created, so at least it ended on an appropriate note.

Rating: B+

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