Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street

[KLAXXON]

Tim Burton and Johnny Depp: two legendary talents team again. The director and star of five remarkable films (including Edward Scissorhands and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory) now add a razor-sharp sixth with this gripping thriller based on Stephens Sondheim's worldwide stage sensation. This tale of a 19th century London Barber with revenge on his mind and a blade in his hande has it all: blood, mystery, romance, wit, exhilarating music and stunning visual design. Co-stars Helena Bonham Carter, Alan Rickman and Sacha Baron Cohen add more menace to the masterpiece as Sweeney's partner and victims in crime.
Need a shave? A close shave? Sweeney's waiting.



Tim Burton adapts Stephen Sondheim's bloody musical for the big screen. Set in eighteenth century London, Johnny Depp plays the murderous barber who resolves to revenge himself on those who have crossed him
A gripping slice of Grand Guignol, there is no other director better suited to bringing Sweeney Todd to the screen than Tim Burton. Like the underside of his fairytale Edward Scissorhands and Gothic thriller Sleepy Hollow, this adaptation of Stephen Sondheim's gore-drenched stage musical continues to mine the theme of parenthood, which has gripped Burton since Batman in 1989 and stayed with him through 2003's Big Fish and beyond.


Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber Of Fleet Street also feels like a departure for Burton and his star Johnny Depp. Arguably the darkest and certainly the bloodiest of Burton's films, it affords Depp the angriest character of his career. Over the course of the actor's five collaborations with the director, he has usually played the wide-eyed innocent. Not so here. When a hollow-eyed Depp sails into view, it's clear that his Sweeney Todd, aka Benjamin Barker, has long since lost his innocence.

In the striking opening sequence Todd returns to England on a merchant's ship after 15 years in Australia. As we learn in flashback, Barker, as he was then called, was arrested thanks to Judge Turpin (Rickman) and his assistant Beadle Bamford (Spall). It transpires that Turpin wanted Barker's wife, Lucy, for himself. Turpin had Barker shipped off to the colonies, and Lucy subsequently poisoned herself. Now Barker's daughter Johanna (Wisener) has been made Turpin's ward, living under virtual house arrest.

"Technically, this is one of Burton's most accomplished films"


Maestro of the macabre Tim Burton grabs Stephen Sondheim’s haemoglobally successful musical by the throat and lets Johnny Depp cut loose as the Victorian hairdresser whose customers will never need another shave. Yet while he finds the ideal business partner in Helena Bonham Carter’s meat-starved pie-maker Mrs Lovett, Sweeney lives only to take revenge on the judge who ruined his life (Alan Rickman). Arias meet arterial spray in Burton’s gothic opera; a tragic but oddly touching tale of love lost, justice found and pastries filled with people.


"basically Edward Scissorhands with a vindictive streak; suitably horrid but never horrifying"Troubled, secretive and unpredictable, the cutthroat coiffeur of London legend is another perfect misfit for the combined talents of Tim Burton and Johnny Depp. Sweeney Todd is their sixth collaboration.

Neutrals will find it an enjoyably off-kilter slice of Grand Guignol; a satisfying marriage of Burton’s gothic sensibility and Stephen Sondheim’s brooding music and lyrics. Horror and musical purists, however, may be mortified.

We meet Sweeney on a ship pulling into London, soured by fifteen years of false imprisonment in Australia. Shunning his real name - Benjamin Barker - he presents a dim view of the world to his callow companion Anthony (Jamie Campbell Bower).

And all because covetous old lech Judge Turpin (Rickman) fancied Mrs Barker. But with Benjamin sent away on a trumped-up charge, she took her own life. So Turpin kept the next best thing: her daughter Joanna (Jayne Wisener).

Sweeney learns all this from Mrs Lovett, purveyor of “the worst pies in London”. Badly affected by a meat shortage, she rents him the upper floor of her shop. It’s the beginning of a beautiful partnership.

A fateful encounter with a preposterous rival barber (Sacha Baron Cohen) leaves Sweeney with a body to dispose of. And Mrs Lovett still can’t afford meat… What to do…? What to do…?

Before you can say “leave the sideburns”, there’s a cascade of carotid-cleaven corpses tumbling through Sweeney’s trapdoor and into Mrs Lovett’s cellar.

Business duly booms. But as the pastry-wench dreams of life with Sweeney, he can sing only of vengeance and his lost daughter.

No, we hadn’t forgotten about Joanna; it’s just that the subplot in which smitten sailor-boy Anthony tries to rescue her from Turpin and his scuzzy henchman (Tim Spall) is, next to the fun and games at the pie shop, rather anaemic.

Not many movies receive an 18 certificate for ‘bloody violence’ alone, which gives you some idea of Sweeney’s gore quotient. Yet there’s never any doubt that we’re dealing in pure fantasy.

(The musical and play on which the film is based both stem from a fictional story published 160 years ago; folklore aside, the consensus is that Todd never existed.)

Burton steeps his production in typically gloomy richness and mordant humour, but drains away dread with a cartoonish tone set by the animated opening titles.

The result is basically Edward Scissorhands with a vindictive streak; suitably horrid but never horrifying.

And while the incidental cues are often thunderous, Sondheim delivers no standout numbers. Musically, it’s solid but unspectacular.

Depp and Bonham Carter handle their songs confidently and competently - even if he has a tendency to go a bit David Bowie and together they look like long-lost ancestors of the White Stripes.

So while it might not put you off your steak-and-kidneys for long, Burton’s best film since Ed Wood will come in handy for anyone in need of something for the weekend.


Johnny Depp ... Sweeney Todd
Helena Bonham Carter ... Mrs. Lovett
Alan Rickman ... Judge Turpin
Timothy Spall ... Beadle
Sacha Baron Cohen ... Pirelli
Jamie Campbell Bower ... Anthony
Laura Michelle Kelly ... Beggar Woman
Jayne Wisener ... Johanna
Ed Sanders ... Toby (as Edward Sanders)
Gracie May ... Baby Johanna
Ava May ... Baby Johanna
Gabriella Freeman ... Baby Johanna
Jody Halse ... Policeman
Aron Paramor ... Policeman
Lee Whitlock ... Policeman



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