Sweeney Todd Movie Review Thread- Page 7

[SporkGoddess]

Posted: 12/21/07 at 12:37pm

Oh, my bad. So he kills Sweeney, but he doesn't go psychotic on us.

I was wondering why that part was missing from the soundtrack...

[Cruel_Sandwich]

Posted: 12/21/07 at 12:53pm

WE GOT THE TALKIN' SHOES!

WE THE MAMMY NUNS!

[TheActr97J]

Posted: 12/21/07 at 2:36pm

There was a gentleman in full-out Johnny Depp as Sweeney Todd costume sitting directly behind me at the midnight showing, complete with razor. Needless to say, it added an extra element of fear to my movie-going experience.

[lovinlovett]

Posted: 12/21/07 at 3:05pm

Cool! I would've loved that!

I don't know if anyone else has mentioned this but Rotten Tomatoes is back up to 88%! Fresh: 115 Rotten: 15. I'd say that's pretty amazing!

[zooxanthellae]

Posted: 12/21/07 at 3:07pm

Yes! This is certainly a great (early) Christmas Present

[ray-andallthatjazz86]

Posted: 12/21/07 at 3:50pm

Just got back from the earliest matinee in my town. WOW!
It is like no other movie musical I have seen. The songs felt so organic to the piece, the flow between dialogue and music was so seamless, it didn't feel like "songs." It worked wonderfully, Burton truly outdid himself.
As much as I loved the whole cast, to me, Helena Bonham Carter takes the movie and walks out with it from the first time we see her. Her Lovett is beyond fantastic and I was completely wrong thinking that she would be lackluster, boring, ineffective when she was first announced as Lovett. She was funny, heart-breaking, needy, sexual, and machiavellic. What a fascinating performance! So who cares if she doesn't sing like LuPone? THANK GOD! It would not have worked for this movie, her singing completely fits the whole tone of Burton's masterpiece.
Depp gave me chills throughout. His "My Friends" and "Epiphany" were haunting. And the "By the Sea" sequence was truly hilarious. I love how Burton included Toby in Mrs.Lovett's fantasies, it gave her so much depth and it made "Not While I'm Around" all the more heart-breaking.
My only quibble is perhaps the fact that Burton seemed quite reluctant to spending time with the lovers, particularly Johanna. I missed "Kiss Me" simply because it gave the lovers a chance to interact and so it would have been clearer why Anthony would insist on rescuing her. The last scene when you get Johanna telling Anthony about how the ghosts would never go away and whatnot seemed like a feeble attempt to give the character some depth. Too little too late. Burton gives up once Sweeney leaves Johanna in the shop, that's the last we see of the lovers.
Minor detail.
The film is a masterpiece, period. I doubt it will be an Oscar contender (though Depp has to be nominated and Carter deserves a nomination over some of the most-praised performances of the year). Still, I do hope it does good business.

[Mythus]

Posted: 12/21/07 at 4:16pm

Someone mentioned Anthony's singing right after he got thrown out - I loved that. Anthony's always had this subtly creepy element about him, as innocent as he's played. "I am in the dark beside you"? You can't deny that that's a little creepy. So the part with him walking down the alley/street with blood on his face, singing...I loved it. He was so earnest, but he was almost bordering on...yeah, creepy. Can't think of another word for it.

[elmore3003]

Posted: 12/21/07 at 4:44pm

I loved Anthony looking for Johanna in a slaughterhouse during the "Johanna" sequence, especially since he has no idea he'll be delivering her to one, and I loved the inmates attacking Fogg.

[roquat]

Posted: 12/21/07 at 4:52pm

Not to mention that Antony looks a little like a lesbian emo rocker...

Ho boy. I loved individual shots and sequences ("Pretty Women", "Epiphany", and the "Not While I'm Around" sequence), but Helena Bonham Carter and her attempts at Morticia Addams deadpan smashed the movie to bits. Her reactions to Toby during and after "Not While I'm Around" threatened to become moving, but then she, ahem, "sung" something--or mistimed yet another laugh line--and I couldn't wait for that oven door to open.

To be fair, I don't know if any director could have made this work. You can't expect people to maintain any ironic distance when throats are slashed over and over again in closeup and fake blood splatters on the camera. During the "Johanna" quartet, I was thinking that this SHOULD be working--the corpse sliding gently down the chute as Sweeney sings, "Look, Johanna, a star!"--but the realistic blood and the sickening crunches as the bodies topple to the cellar freeze the laughs. After awhile, you go numb--the killings seem identical and passionless. It's like KILL BILL with songs.

[Mythus]

Posted: 12/21/07 at 4:57pm

You know, now that I think about it, during the Act II Johanna I wasn't paying attention to the actual song at all. I was too busy flinching when the bodies hit the floor. It's too bad that they couldn't find a happy medium, where the actual song could come across with the killings, because it's such an fascinating contradiction (and a beautiful song).

[actormcfamous]

Posted: 12/21/07 at 5:18pm

WARNING: SPOILERS ABOUND.

I think I may be the only person on this board that hated the movie. I saw it at midnight last night and was extremely disappointed. I personally don't think it worked as a movie or as a musical.

I thought Tim Burton's direction was awful - the movie read to me as a horror film (which I don't believe it should be). From the stylized fantasy conceptualization (that he uses in all his films) to the interpretation of Sondheim's material, I really think he missed the mark. The poignancy in Sweeney Todd is the element of realism - that the barber you go to could be Sweeney Todd. I think that while Burton's London was visually stunning, it took away the "danger" of Sweeney because the audience always knew that he was living in some other world.

I really feel like Burton (and the cast) missed so much within Sondheim's genius score. I've had the honor of playing Toby in the past and so I'll give an example regarding his performance since I was particularly paying attention to him. For one, "Not While I'm Around." While I thought that actually having an 11 year old boy singing this song to Mrs. Lovett was interesting in its own right, I got no sense of Toby's inner struggle as he's singing the song - Toby should be at the same time warning Mrs. Lovett, trying not to frighten her, proclaiming his love for her, and getting her to love him more than Sweeney (not an easy task). Of these objectives, I only saw the first being played.

Also, the gore. C'mon, but at the end when Sweeney went down into the bakehouse he looked like he belonged in Carrie. I thought that the bloodiness was unnecessary – the movie became more about seeing how Depp would kill his next victim than telling the story. It was excessive and distracted from the flesh and bones (pardon the bad pun) of work.

Other things from a storytelling perspective: had I not known the show before seeing the movie, I would have been really lost in a couple places. For one, the letter (that Sweeney writes to the judge telling him to come to the shop to get Johanna that night) made no sense and the people around me were really confused when the judge came back. Also, the Lucy/Beggar Woman thing was really underplayed. People around me were also really confused as to why Johnny Depp was freakin' out at the end when he saw her dead down in the bakehouse. I also think that the moment when she walks into the barbershop at the end of the show and has the "Lucy" moment right before Sweeney walks in and kills her (since the Judge is coming) was COMPLETELY unclear and that moment is so beautiful and haunting. There is no pause when she enters the shop and goes from "Beadle, where are you?" to the "Beedle-deedle-deedle-dumpling" (which is supposed to be a lullaby to the baby Johanna she is remembering but instead sounded like she was just looking for him).

Also, the ending moment where Toby kills Sweeney was all wrong. Toby just pops up out of the cellar and slashes Sweeney's throat. There's no monologue before that and no closing bit that establishes that Toby is anything more than a pissed off little kid. There's not even a hint that Toby's gone insane (or that he's killing Todd because Todd killed the only person who ever loved Toby) and so we don't sympathize with Toby at all.

I didn't buy the Anthony/Johanna romance for one second. Didn't think the actors were great (will get to that in a second) but the absense of Kiss Me was the only cut in the film that bothered me. Anthony and Johanna don't have any scenes in which they actually speak to each other during until Fogg's Asylum and I think that's a big mistake. I didn't "get" the love from them, and Anthony came off as a creepy stalker more than anything else.

Performances were (overall) mediocre. While I completely understand doing the show/film with great actors, I thought that the singing was awful. All (except Depp and the kid who plays Toby) had very meager voices and straight-toned everything. The film sounded overprocessed vocally.

Helena Bonham Carter (Lovett) - not great. I thought she had some fun acting moments but any acting within her (many) songs was killed by the meakness of her voice. I'm not saying she needed to be a crazy belter, but I thought her lack of vocal timbre killed any humor or power within her music.

Anthony/Johanna: nothing more than the stereotypical "we're in love but the world is against us but we don't care" bit. Boring.

Sacha Baron Cohen (Pirelli): alright - pretty unmemorable.

Toby: okay. I thought that Burton's choice to lessen Toby's slowness (in the head) was an interesting one but seriously unsupported and undeveloped.

Depp: had some great moments but suffered from Burton's one-note direction. I didn't really pity him or see the suffering that I would have made me understand him and hurt for him at the end when he realizes he’s killed his wife.

Overall, a misguided film. Sondheim has repeatedly said that he really wasn’t that involved in the production process (though he approved casting). I think this is a big mistake – the most fatal error of the film was not paying attention to the source material.

It probably sounds like I’m some intense purist who doesn’t want to say anything new done with the movie, just a filmed version of the stage musical. I’m all for reinventions of Sondheim’s work, but what bothered me most about this one was that the performances and direction did not utilize or activate the brilliant work handed to them.

[TomMonster]

Posted: 12/21/07 at 5:21pm

Sondheim WANTED it to be a horror film. The bloodier the better.

He got what he wanted.

[pab]

Posted: 12/21/07 at 5:31pm

"I think I may be the only person on this board that hated the movie."

Well, at least there is something in your post about which we agree.

[SueleenGay]

Posted: 12/21/07 at 5:44pm

I posted this in a thread on the OT board, but thought I would jump in here, too...

I unexpectedly had the afternoon off and caught a matinee and most of it is just perfect. I can't tell you how many times I choked up just hearing the score (opening credits, going into the Johanna duet/city on fire scene and I bawled during Not While I'm Around.)


I did have a couple of major problems with the cast, mostly Depp and Bonham-Carter. He is pretty much one note, not too bad, but just not the depth that I think he is capable of. He starts out crazy and stays that way. I never saw a glimmer of hope prior to his finding out what happened to Lucy and Johanna. When Lovett tells him the story, that is when he snaps. Hated, hated HATED his wig. (Yea, his fault, I know. )

She is interesting to look at and has a couple of brilliant scenes, but vocally she just can't cut it and is just so lethargic. She totally lacks the drive and ambition that the character needs.) Neither of these performances ruin the film, but it could have been perfect with a couple of other actors in those roles.


I thought the supporting cast was just fine. I loved the Toby. It always bugged me in the stage version when he goes totally mad at the end. I think the way "Not While I'm Around" and the surrounding scenes made it more likely he would kill Sweeney without going totally bonkers.

The art direction is incredible. Except for that damn WIG!

All in all, much better than I expected and not ruined at all by the two lead performances.

[CATSNYrevival]

Posted: 12/21/07 at 5:46pm

I liked it. Sweeney is one of my favorite shows and while the movie won't end up being one of my favorite movie musicals or anything I felt like it recieved an appropriate screen adaptation. For me, Helena's singing could have been stronger, Toby could have been older, a few more songs could have been retained, but for the most part, on its own, it's a bloody good film. The surprise stand out for me was actually Jamie Campbell Bower. He was absolutly outstanding. That's quite an amazing film debut.

[SueleenGay]

Posted: 12/21/07 at 6:12pm

And might I just add that I was surprised that By The Sea made it into the film not only at all, but that it is one of the most delightful scenes in the film.

[bwaymizfit2]

Posted: 12/21/07 at 6:18pm

I saw Sweeney Todd last night and LOVED it! But, everything I think has pretty much been said already, so I'll spare people the repetition.

What I find disturbing though, is the number of reviewers on imdb who "wished Danny Elfman had written the music." Don't get me wrong, I adore Danny Elfman, but...OY!

[lovinlovett]

Posted: 12/21/07 at 6:40pm

SueleenGay: "Hated, hated HATED his wig"

????????? Didn't notice it but I thought he looked great. White stripe really wasn't necessary but it didn't bother me a bit during the film.
Updated On: 12/21/07 at 06:40 PM

[xoxRogue]

Posted: 12/21/07 at 6:43pm

And might I just add that I was surprised that By The Sea made it into the film not only at all, but that it is one of the most delightful scenes in the film.

I really wasn't prepared for that at all. It was fantastic.

Seriously, when my friends and I got out of the theater, we said that we could watch that scene again at that very moment.

[SporkGoddess]

Posted: 12/21/07 at 6:57pm

actormcfamous: Wait, the "Beedle-deedle" part is supposed to be a lullaby to baby Johanna? Really?

Learn something new everyday...

[nitsua]

Posted: 12/21/07 at 6:59pm

The first few songs go by so fast. I think the stage show, with the small "Ballad"s during scene changes, helps the audience absorb the information. But here, it's song, after song, after song. The end result is "Nice, but whatever." Then, during the second act, it drags a little bit, and the final act goes by so fast. I'm sure if I didn't know the story, I would've been lost from the get-go.

The singing is fantastic. Depp and Helena aren't trained singers, but they're so much in character, it's brilliant. I don't see them any other way. I think the weakest performer was Sascha. It didn't look like he was comfortable in the role. Or maybe holding back. I don't know. He only has two scenes, so it's okay. I thought the best one was Toby. His "Not While I'm Around" was haunting. Antony and Joanna are pretty much useless. Their story time's cut so much that we basically see only glimpses of them. They should've kept in "Kiss Me", at least.

It's bloody. Really, really, really bloody. I didn't expect it to be THAT bloody. After "A Little Priest", Sweeney slices and dices at least 6 victims, and sends them all down the shoot, where they fall on their necks. It's hilarious, and so fitting. The bloodiest scene, by far, is when Sweeney finally kills Turpin. It's an almost joyous scene. Sweeney's got so much pent up anger. He's barely raised his voice, but he lets it all out on Turpin's neck, sending blood everywhere. Sweeney's covered in his. His face, his arms, chest, and it even covered the window.

As for the songs themselves, my favorite is "A Little Priest". I love the way they did it. In the stage show, Sweeney and Lovett make up the Priest, and the fop, and everyone else, but here, they look out the window and there they are! i really liked that. It's an hilarious scene. "Joanna" is a great song, but it seems that it's the only thing Antony sings, and by the 2nd time he sings it, it's a little tiresome. I just wanted him to get over it. We know. Move on. Blah blah. It was weird to have "God, That's Good!" performed without the "God, That's Good!" lines. The ensemble doesn't sing at all.

I've never seen Toby, played by Edward Sanders, performed by a kid and I think it makes it more terrifying, especially the ending. Here's this little kid, put through so much already, and then to be part of this?!

The ending is cut and rushed. I think it ends a good 5 or 6 minutes too soon. It has a good final image, but there needed to be more. What happens to the three surviving characters? No mention of them.

I give it an 8.

[My Strongest Suit]

Posted: 12/21/07 at 6:59pm

I saw the midnight showing last night and I must say I was pleasantly surprised. I was so nervous they were going to ruin it with actors that couldn't sing. Johnny Depp acted this role amazingly (as I knew he would) and his singing wasn't bad either. My biggest complaint is Helena Bonham Carter. She could not sing and her lack of inflection in her voice when she sang just made her performance "dead". I wish they had gotten someone who could sing better. That would have added so much to the film. The Mrs. Lovett character was not as sympathetic as she should be. At the end, you could barely hear/understand her reasons for not telling Sweeney that Lucy was still alive.
Overall, it was good but I do wish they would have shown Antony and Johanna's relationship develop more.

[TheFriarsDruggist]

Posted: 12/21/07 at 7:26pm

I'm a massive Johnny Depp fan, a huge Tim Burton fan, and a fan of the musical it's based on(I overplay the recording with Angela Lansbury and Len Cariou to the point of exhaustion)...So I went into this thing with my expectations sky high, and was it as good as I was hoping? Hell. Yes.

The whole cast was terrific. Johnny Depp was a perfect mix of psychotic but emotional, and even charming at times. Helena Bonham Carter did a damn fine job. Alan Rickman was on the ball(But honestly now, when is he NOT?), as was Timothy Spall(Who does really well with the creepy sidekick roles). Jamie Campbell Bower(Anthony) and Jayne Wisener (Johanna) both turned in good performances-even if Bower was a little creepy at times. Sacha Baron Cohen was enjoyable, if a little distracting at times, and the kid playing Toby did what he needed to do just fine.

As for the music, there's quite a bit missing from the original score(Which regrettably and lamentably includes 'The Ballad Of Sweeney Todd'), but I understand why they made the cuts they did. It's obvious Johnny Depp hasn't had a lot of training vocally, but that was never a problem. The musical highlights for me were 'Epiphany,' 'A Little Priest,' 'Pretty Women,' 'Poor Thing,' and 'My Friends.' This soundtrack will be living in my CD player for quite a while.

Being a Tim Burton movie, the eye candy is laid on thick. The entire movie looks great, and yes-the blood is red, and there is plenty of it on display.

Overall, just as good...Maybe better...Than I had expected.

10/10

[actormcfamous]

Posted: 12/21/07 at 7:51pm

SporkGoddess - when the Beggar Woman comes back into the barbershop toward the end of Act II, there's supposed to be a big pause while she recognizes the shop, then mirrors what she did in Poor Thing in Act I (usually it's her opening the shutters/holding and rocking baby Johanna). Then she sings the Beedle-Deedle thing to the baby while she's "rocking" it and Sweeney storms in and he kills her. At least that's the way I've always seen it done.

[Mythus]

Posted: 12/21/07 at 7:57pm

There also is song called "Beggar Woman's Lullaby" at that point during the show. Some productions have it, some don't.

Mrs. Lovett wouldn't have screamed and freaked (which also didn't happen in the film) prompting Sweeney to run down to the bakehouse and thus not kill Johanna.

Uhh...she definitely screamed and freaked out when the Judge grabbed her skirt. Her face was terrifying (and terrified) when they cut to her. That's what prompted Sweeney to tell Johanna to forget his face and run down to the bakehouse. Maybe you were watching a different film.