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ENTERTAINMENT
'Sweeney Todd' cuts deep into the glorious macabre
Dismal sets, cartoonish gore and Johnny Depp singing -- what's so appealing about that?
Just about everything, actually.
"Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street," director Tim Burton's dark-as-soot take on Stephen Sondheim's Broadway musical, is all about the atmosphere. And as with any Burton film, it has atmosphere aplenty.
It also has Helena Bonham Carter and Alan Rickman, which never hurts. Carter in particular is wonderful as Mrs. Lovett, a dreary lady who makes pies filled with ... you really don't want to know.
Actually, you probably do know what she fills her pies with, just as you probably know that Sweeney Todd (Depp) is known for giving particularly close shaves. Sondheim's musical is so well known, in fact, that one might wonder what the point of a film version would be. Wouldn't it inevitably disappoint by comparison?
That's where Burton comes in. Any movie he makes is his, and his alone. The look, the feel of his films -- dark, menacing and richly beautiful -- is instantly recognizable. And when he teams with Depp -- this is their sixth film together -- he employs an especially willing accomplice.
With Depp wielding razors as if they were extensions of his hands, in fact, Sweeney Todd is particularly reminiscent of "Edward Scissorhands." Yet where that film was all about the heartbreak of not fitting in, Sweeney Todd is all about the cold comfort of revenge.
Todd returns to London devoted to nothing but; years after he was wronged by Judge Turpin (Rickman). He devotes his life to nothing but revenge and doesn't care who he must sacrifice to attain it; the fact that he constantly breaks into song doesn't mean he's merry, just that he's in a musical.
Ah, the songs. Like any songs in a musical, they're broad, loud, brassy, even when they're dangerous. Think big, in other words. Of course, the natural question anyone would have is whether Depp can carry a tune.
He can, kind of. You won't mistake him for Michael Crawford, but he doesn't embarrass himself, either.
Yet the difference between Depp and, say, Rickman (who is, as ever, fantastic) is that you can practically see Depp sweating the singing. To Rickman, on the other hand, the singing comes much more easily, which makes the character all the more convincing.
But the real surprise is Carter. If Depp is an actor who occasionally pauses to sing, for Carter the singing and the acting are one and the same, one a natural extension of the other. She's just as funny, and just as sad, when singing as when speaking. That's a tougher trick than it sounds.
Depp never breaks the mask of gloom and doom. Luckily, Carter and Rickman do; otherwise Sweeney Todd would be an unrelenting downer, show tunes or no. Also welcome is a really funny performance by Timothy Spall as Beadle Bamford, Judge Turpin's rotund little toady. Sacha Baron Cohen also shows up as a rival barber. But Cohen's become so associated with a singular character that one can't shake the feeling of watching Borat give a man a shave.
A word of warning: there will be blood. Lots and lots of it, of the theatrical, ketchup-looking variety. That'll happen when razor meets throat as often as it does here.
But in the end Sweeney Todd is all about spectacle -- macabre, glorious, sing-along spectacle, a combination for which Burton has no equal. Let's slit some throats and put on a show!
Rated R for graphic, bloody violence.
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