Sweeney Todd

I’m hard pressed to recall a recent movie that basks in bloody excess as much as "Sweeney Todd:" From the animated blood running through the opening titles to the numerous body parts that paint the floors, walls, and even the characters themselves, we haven’t seen this much hemoglobin in a Johnny Depp film since the infamous blood geyser in "A Nightmare on Elm Street." Yet for all that, "Sweeney Todd" might be director Tim Burton’s most accessible film since…hell, I don’t know…"Planet of the Apes?" The exception being that the former is actually good.

An adaptation of the Stephen Sondheim musical, the film is a cheerfully nasty surprise."Sweeney Todd" succeeds precisely because Burton and screenwriter John Logan balance the large amounts of gore with black humor and not-so-subtle socio-economic commentary.

Todd (Depp) – real name Benjamin Barker – is returning to London in secret after 15 years of wrongful imprisonment. He was once a successful barber, as well as a devoted husband and father, until the lecherous Judge Turpin (Alan Rickman) set his sights on Barker's wife and had him sentenced for a crime he didn’t commit. The newly christened Todd has come back to the city to search for his family. Unsurprisingly, his years away have soured him somewhat on his former home, as he sings:

There's a hole in the world like a great black pit
and the vermin of the world inhabit it
and its morals aren't worth what a pin can spit
and it goes by the name of...London.

And so he ventures off into this wretched hive of scum and villainy. Upon returning to his old house on Fleet Street Todd learns from his neighbor, Mrs. Lovett (Helena Bonham Carter), that Turpin went on to rape his wife, who then poisoned herself. His daughter Johanna is now trapped in the Judge’s ward. Hopes for a joyous reunion are now dashed, Todd opts for revenge, but when the Judge unexpectedly slips through his fingers, he’s forced to broaden his horizons. He redirects his rage at the rest of the city’s well-to-do residents, murdering them in the comfort of his custom designed barber shop. The fact that Mrs. Lovett’s meat pie business is suffering thanks to a lack of fresh ingredients only ensures that corpse disposal won’t be a problem. They bake meat pies with all the dead bodies. Yum.

Macabre concept aside, "Sweeney Todd" is largely free of annoying Burton trademarks, yet is so undeniably Burton somehow. Granted, London looks every bit as dank and corrupt as Gotham City did in "Batman," but the director exercises a surprising amount of restraint, never allowing the cast to stray into absurdity. Depp and Carter both give moving performances but are, at times, so repetitive that it prevents us from becoming fully involved with their characters, because they almost become characters of themselves. Depp in particular remains withdrawn until the film’s climax, content to let his comically dark circled eyes do most of the work Carter fares better, but we’ve seen her play the off-kilter anti-heroine so many times Mrs. Lovett inevitably starts blurring into Bellatrix Lestrange. It’s hell being a Goth icon, I guess. Sacha Baron Cohen also makes the most of his small role as rival barber Signor Pirelli.

I enjoyed "Sweeney Todd," not just for the gleeful murders, the majority of the songs (especially that cute Johannnaaa song) or the depiction of London as a kind of Victorian meets Goth classic Burton, but because I know a lot of people with no knowledge of Sondheim’s musical (much less Tim Burton) are going to buy tickets for a cute holiday movie starring that handsome Johnny Depp and end up experiencing repeated slices of the neck and twisted cartoony blood. And that thought makes me happy. As it would Sweeney Todd, I'm sure.

B+