Nevertheless, it's a stroke of dark genius when Sweeney Todd comes to the big screen, the movie version of the Stephen Sondheim stage musical. With the brilliant duo of Tim Burton at the helm and Johnny Depp taking on the title role, their sixth film collaboration, you know you can expect some quality big-screen goods.
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street was released to critical and commercial fanfare late last year, and I am certainly not one to quibble with the Oscar winning (Best Art Direction) and Golden Globe winning (Best Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy) and Best actor (Musical or Comedy).
In olde time London, barber Benjamin Barker is falsely convicted of a crime and sentenced to a life of hard labour by respected Judge Turpin (Alan Rickman) who has designs on Barker's beautiful wife Lucy.Fifteen years later, Benjamin Barker has ditched his old moniker for the name Sweeney Todd and returns to London looking for his wife and vengeance for the years stolen from him. He returns to his old flat about Nellie Lovett's (Helena Bonham Carter) pie shop, where the landlady's pies are most certainly not renowned for their quality.
After Todd's shipmate Anthony finds out where Turpin is keeping Todd's teenage daughter, Johanna, the newly crowned 'Demon Barber of Fleet Street' works out a dastardly, blood-soaked plot for revenge in which no man in need of a shave will stand in his way.
This dark tale of revenge and murder is set to a musical score which proves that Bonham Carter and Depp can really sing (is there anything this man can't do?) Unlike some musicals, the numbers don't seem to drag. It's an odd combination, musical moviemaking meets bloodthirsty serial killer, but Burton's dark skew on old London makes for a fiendishly good watch.
Sweeney Todd's definitely gruesome, but it's great! The gory, twisted movie is definitely soaked in blood, but this is dark revenge, people. We're not talking about a dance around the maypole here.
Johnny Depp, as always, is brilliant as the hard done by Benjamin Barker driven insane by Judge Turpin's lust for his family. Helena Bonham Carter, who I love, shows once again she's not getting these juicy parts by virtue of being Burton's partner. Nellie Lovett's deviousness is only matched by the gory human filling encased in her pies.
When so many films these days are made from the same bland cookie-cutter formula, Sweeney Todd is an all-singing gory slice of unhinged brilliance. Don't miss!
Extras: An entire second disc is dedicated to the extra bits and pieces which movie buffs love so about the DVD formatting. Find segments on Sweeney's London, translating Stephen Sondheim's musical to film, and more. Well worth the purchase for fans.