I love the Sondheim stage show. Could a movie adaptation, even by Tim Burton, overcome my general disdain for movie musicals? Yes. Yes, it could.
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007)
| Overall |  | Story |  |
| Production | | Acting | |
Story: I tried synopsizing the story to two people over the last week who’d never seen the play, and both stared at me as though I were waxing rhapsodic over Texas Chainsaw Massacre or something like that. This melodrama of vengenance, madness, and meat pies, a dark and bloody comedy at best, is bound to be tricky to produce without tipping into horror or ridiculousness. Reducing a Broadway show’s run time to fit into just under two hours is also going to be a balancing act, with the narrative flow and the show’s fans both at stake.
Burton pulls it all off trimming the story down, trimming here and there to keep the focus on Sweeney and Lovett (mostly at the expense of the Young Lovers and Turpin). While many of the songs are shortened from the stage production, and several cut, there was little that I found myself longing for that wasn’t there.
Of that little, some were trivial — the Beggar Woman cuts, especially early on, are problematic, for example. The biggest cut/difference is excising the entire “Ballad” from the beginning and the end. The music for it was apparently recorded, but Burton decided the framing chorus was too theatrical. That would be true for their appearances within the film (show, don’t tell), but their lack at the beginning remove a certain — well, legendary aspect to the tale, and their lack at the end unbalances it all, leaving us with a single bleak and bloody image that is nearly too powerful. Even running it over the main and end titles would have been helpful.
On the bright side, there was no Celine Dion pop single over the end titles, so one must be grateful.
Much has been made of the Grand Guignol violence of the movie (“Rated R for graphic bloody violence”), and certainly there’s rivers and rivers of blood (real and CG) of varying consistencies, and violence (some casual, some brutal and startling). but from the beginning Burton makes it stylized and just cartoony enough to not be as awful as it might be. And, honestly, it’s a bloody, violent play, and what we see is simply seeing it done with more fx than the stage would allow.
Production: The set pieces and costuming are all marvelous, the make-up is quite nice, and there’s plenty that invokes the old London the story is set in. The cinematography, coupled with CG work, almost always a delight. It doesn’t feel like a play turned to a movie, but neither does the setting overwhelm or distract. Nicely done.
Acting: The devil is in the details, and here’s where the show is less than perfect. Johnny Depp does an excellent job as the brooding, tortured, maddened Sweeney, too dangerous to be truly sympathetic but certainly an object of some pathos.
Depp’s singing talents are not tremendous, but passable in a Rex Harrison fashion. Ironically, when he does actually belt it out, he adopts a modern rock music scooping style that jars with the period and the source material. There are also a few times, when he’s being falsely casual and pleasant that Sweeney sounds a bit too much like Cap’n Jack. But those are mostly quibbles — Depp’s performance is worthy of Oscar nomination, at least.
Helena Bonham Carter, on the other hand, suffers by comparison. Her singing is too weak and whispy. Burton intentionally cast non-singers (focusing instead on acting) in the lead roles, but here it doesn’t pay off. Carter simply doesn’t have the presence or voice to carry off the role, which is particularly obvious when she’s singing with Depp.
She seems too young, too — a bit consumptive, perhaps (though with, ahem, ample bosom), but too pretty. On the other hand, she does a nice job playing the true amoral monster of the benighted pair.
The other roles are all well done. Alan Rickman does the expected excellent job as dissolute tyrant Judge Turpin (plus he can sing!), Timothy Spall plays a delightfully awful Beadle, and Ed Sanders is a surprisingly strong Toby. The other few roles are also well rounded.
Overall: Burton’s adaptation should be a textbook example of how to adopt a stage show to the screen. He makes folks breaking into song seem natural (aided well by strong source material, of course), and while there are a few missteps, it’s overall an excellent job. As long as buckets of stage blood don’t bother you, it’s worth seeing, and it’s highly likely it will be added to my DVD collection when it comes out in that medium.
Good, I am glad that you liked it, I was worried that it might be a bit too bloody and violent for MK.
HBC’s singing kind of grew on me, and hit the high point in By the Sea. Also the Bosom was because she was preggers while the movie was being filmed.
All the Minor Characters were great and Ed Sanders was fantastic.
And yes, I would have liked to have had Epilogue sung as the Credits rolled.
Another good review sir, well done. 🙂
The By the Sea number was excellent — but was almost a bit jarring in being outside the normal setting. It was, in some ways, the most Burtonesque sequence.
I don’t think Margie was thrilled by the buckets o’ blood — but it didn’t affect either of our appetites at the very pleasant dinner thereafter.
Though we didn’t order meat pies …
How about a shave?
Ah, yes, another New Year’s Eve and another night of sitting in a darkened movie theater gorging ourselves on popcorn…
My only quibble was that the music overshadowed the vocals at some points. It was really hard to make out what they were singing sometimes. Plus, it was painfully obvious which actors were non-Broadway types and which were–especially during the duet between Carter and the boy. His voice just ground her into dust.
I agree on all counts, Solonor.
I just listened to the CD set from the stage production. I’m impressed that there are very few songs that were cut or clipped for the movie that I miss. A lot of Young Lovers tunes (which, as it’s the least interesting part of the show, was a good bit to cut), mostly, though Turpin’s Mea Culpa is good character development that was lost. Losing the tooth pulling part of the contest saved five minutes, easy, along with Beadle’s organ playing.
The biggest lost remains the Intro, Exit, and Inter-scene chorus, which has some delightful lyrics. It might have been easier to cut it all out than to figure out what lines to omit.
The SEB family (+ extended) has plans of seeing this movie tomorrow afternoon. Weather (snow) immobolized us from getting out and about earlier over the holidays to see it. C
I missed the ballad too, and I had a thought about how Tim could’ve used it at the end – but I guess I should move to Hollywood and make my own movie. The other song I missed was City on Fire (when the inmates escape), but that’s not much. And although Mea Culpa ended up on the original soundtrack, it was cut from the show. It can be performed when the show is done(the music is included), I’ve yet to see it in any of the performances I’ve seen.
You also might feel differently about Mrs. Lovetts’ age if you had seen the recent Broadway production, where Patty LuPone played it much younger and move overtly sexual(and even more amoral). HBC singing, was an issue, albeit a small one, for me.
I thought it was a nice touch to have Toby actually be a child rather than a late teen/early 20s young man as he always had been previously. Makes him more sympathetic, especially that stuff about the workhouse.
Although I have both soundtracks (the new one was a gift) I doubt I’ll listen to the new one as much since so much of the music that I know (like I know all the words) is missing.
Noticed City on Fire was gone, but that’s a very incidental piece (though fun) to the plot, so that worked okay.
I’m trying to think if I’ve seen the Mea Culpa scene — I have a vague recollection of it on the DVD of the Broadway (Lansbury) show I have, but I could be wrong.
HBC remains just a bit too pretty, but I imagine she could grow on me.
I did like Toby.
I’ve seen the Mea Culpa scene, but it’s not on any of the visual recordings I’ve had, nor did we perform it. I can just jump in and agree, Carter was too young as Mrs. Lovett, and not “common enough.” I was pleasantly surprised that the actor playing Anthony could sing.