Oscar Cleanup: "Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street" Review - Written by Tony D

“Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street”
2007
*** out of ****
Director: Tim Burton
Cast: Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter, Sacha Baron Cohen


“There's a hole in the world like a great black pit And it's filled with people who are filled with shit And the vermin of the world inhabit it. But not for long...” – Johnny Depp, “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street”


They say that if you can dream it, you can achieve it. I think that was what they were talking about when they put Tim Burton’s new film, “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street” on the map. Burton, the king of the Goths from Hot-Topic and director of that one Christmas movie that irks that living skeet dropping from my nuggets, can be one of those directors that you can either love or hate. His films are so diverse in taste that you can leave the screening room with a sweet or sour one. His “Batman” films are too dark for me, “Big Fish” is not worth my time, I despise “Mars Attacks!” more than I despise the fact that everyone loves it, and I HATE “Nightmare Before Christmas.” Does that tell you anything about my love for this guy?

Actually, I only really “loved” two of his films, both of them were when he collaborated with Depp. The first one was “Edward Scissorhands,” and while that might be the reason why any Emo teenager would be obsessed with death, makeup, and tragedy, I feel like that its one hell of poetry. The second one is the more obvious “Ed Wood,” and I waited for that film until it came out on DVD five-million years after it should have. I did like “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” though I don’t know many people who actually call it good besides me.

But now Tim Burton and Johnny Depp are at their sixth collaboration, and something tells me that they should take a ten year break from each other. Why don’t you get into a Paris-Nicole fight, apologize with each other, and then only work together for now on just to receive money from studios that are familiar with you? It seems like that Depp is the second director, while Burton just makes his world look pretty. Johnny Depp makes is nothing more but a person to look pretty for the camera and shine like a star. It’s becoming a habit now that Depp is that one star in Hollywood that doesn’t even need to act to get attention. All he has to do is become eye-candy for pre-teenaged girls and the man will rule the world someday.

That’s not to say that “Sweeney Todd” is terrible. Why, I can’t remember when the last time a revenge film shook me the way that “Sweeney Todd” did. It made revenge look… fun. Johnny Depp pretty much OWNED his role, just like the other roles that he played. But the thing is that maybe these two are just a bit too full of themselves. Maybe the success got the best of them. I have no idea, but whatever it was, “Sweeney Todd” was affected. The same exact music was used too much and all of the music sounded slow and pretty much never picked up. The acting was silly, but a good silly (unless if you are Alan Rickman, then it’s uncalled for).

Benjamin Barker (Johnny Depp) breaks out of prison after fifteen years being held up in there for some crime that he never committed. He brings another prison-inmate, Anthony, (Jamie Campbell Bower) along on the ship with him. They land in London, and while Anthony plans on starting a new life and finding a girlfriend, Barker plans on getting revenge on the people who wrongfully put him in prison and separated him from his wife Lucy and his daughter Johanna (Jayne Wisener). Barker changes his name to Sweeney Todd, and ends up walking into a closed meat-pie shop that was once owned by Todd’s old friend Mrs. Lovett (Helena Bonham Carter) (Helena Bonham Carter).

He moves into the little shack upstairs from Mrs. Lovett’s Meat-Pies and starts to carry his title as a barber. But first, in order to get the word out of his new “business,” he challenges a rival barber, Pirelli, (Sacha Baron Cohen) at a shaving contest, judged by Beadle Bamford, (Timothy Spall) one of the two men who were involved in locking him up. Todd wins, and Bamford lets him know that he’s going to come in one of the days that week. He’s preparing to get ready to kill the Judge (Alan Rickman), who locked him up and now is keeping his daughter in his house. His daughter is hoping to escape with the help of Anthony.

Pirelli stops by the shop and lets Todd know that he’s onto his game. He knows that his real name is Benjamin Barker and he prepares to blackmail him. Todd kills him, and has no idea what to do with the body. He realizes that Mrs. Lovett could use the body for meat so she could open the shop back up. When she decides that it’s a great idea, the revenge begins opening night.

Tim Burton automatically gets kudos just for the set. You know that the man knows how to create a dark universe – he did it just right in “Edward Scissorhands.” He does it just right here. It’s dark to the point that I’d be surprised when it ever saw the light of day. It fits the film. The dark setting makes the killings seem more serious. I loved the entire fact how they all just took place in the shack above the meat-pie shop. There, you will see one of the greatest parts of the film, where a camera goes out of the window and shows a view of the city of London. It just fits the bill.

Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter have great chemistry. Depp is one of the most brilliant actors in the industry today. No matter how bad the movie is (“From Hell”), he would always fit in with his character just perfectly. Carter is one of the most underrated actresses. If you start talking about her to the usual movie watcher, they’ll slap you and ask who the hell it is. From work ranging from “Fight Club” to “Harry Potter 5,” it seems like she always fits in with her character also. Two brilliant actors come together, with voices that will amaze everyone that watches it, and they are sure to score some nominations within the award season. Even Sacha Baron Cohen, who practices twenty hours a day just to get into his Ali-G character, does an awesome job.

You would actually expect that a man that is as cynical as I am would love a movie like this. I’m sorry, but the ending just blew it for me. Actually, I really LIKED the ending, it’s just the music that went with it. Maybe it was I who didn’t know much about the musical upon seeing the film, but the music blew it when they reprised the music that was playing at the beginning of the movie at the end of the movie. Even though I really liked the ending, it kind of… umm… ruined it.

I went to go see this in a sold-out theater, so that means that we were all bunched up together. A lady sitting next to me was talking to another lady about how she saw this when it was originally on stage. She said that it was three hours long, so Burton had to cut another hour and many of numbers to fit it into a two hour movie. I could only imagine if that one hour would have been the better or worse of the movie.