How’s this for a reason to want to burst into song over the merry yuletide weekend? Dickens meets the Donner party in “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street.”
Brought to you by the grim reaper of movie stylists, visual virtuoso Tim Burton, today’s eye-popping and riveting movie adaptation of Stephen Sondheim’s perverse 1979 Broadway musical about cannibalism in 19th-century London arrives just in time to give the season’s mincemeat pie a whole new meaning. Why? Because the meat pie’s filling is human flesh. And the title’s anti-heroic protagonist supplying it, played by an irresistibly balmy Johnny Depp, is a heartsick barber who slices open blood-splattering jugular veins without a trace of remorse.
I can’t imagine how a tale of un-catchy tunes and cutthroat revenge — in the most literal and graphic sense — will appeal to a general audience at this or any other time of year. It’s as morbid, cool and moody as composer Sondheim’s meandering minor key melodies, director Burton’s desaturated gory fantasies and Depp’s best angst-filled performances are all known for being.
But if this corpse bake is only for acquired tastes, the piquant blend of these three dark artists feeds into an absorbing story in which the production numbers only increase the sense of foreboding, propel the plot momentum and enrich the characters in a way that’s not always the case in more overstuffed movie musicals. Screenwriter John Logan judiciously trimmed and streamlined the original theatrical version to suit the big screen. Thus, despite some grandly vicious Victorian spectacle, the strong performances of Depp (making a deft debut as a crooner) and the rest of the company remain the spirited focus.
The action sets in motion when Depp’s Sweeney Todd returns to seedy Fleet Street after years of false imprisonment at the hands of the corrupt and lecherous Judge Turpin (a fabulously menacing Alan Rickman). Todd’s wife is presumed dead, and his beautiful daughter (Jayne Wisner) has become the helpless ward of the judge, under the muscle of the henchman Beadle (always colorful Timothy Spall).
Sweeny sets out to kill the judge. His smitten landlady Nellie Lovett, a pie cook in search of cheap meat (played ghoulishly and yet still somehow sympathetically by Helena Bonham Carter), willingly conspires. Because before Sweeny neutralizes the villain, loads of delicious bystanders (including “Borat’s” Sacha Baron Cohen) get in the way of the budding serial killer’s fury and ultra-sharp razor blades.
Beware: Scenes set in the dungeon where the bodies get cooked are particularly disgusting … and anti-Christmassy downers. But for particular fans of Sondheim, Burton and Depp or for us Scrooges who can’t take any more forced holiday cheerfulness, this potent “Sweeney Todd” is just the antidote.
‘Sweeney Todd’
*****
» Starring: Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter, Alan Rickman, Sacha Baron Cohen
» Director: Tim Burton
» Rated R for graphic bloody violence
» Running time: 115 minutes
