What can you say about a movie that has revenge, secret identities, cannibalism and more throat slashings than your local meat packing plant? When it’s directed by dreary genius Tim Burton and starring his two favorite muses in Johnny Depp and (Burton’s lady, not to mention mother of his children) the lovely Helena Bonham Carter, you say it’s brilliant, stunning, grotesque, unsettling and funny. While it could easily be said that this is Burton’s best film to date (and it has been said many, many times) I still prefer the two Edwards (Wood and Scissorhands). I certainly find it to be no minor coincidence that Burton and Depp simply bring out the best in each other. This may just be the film to get them some of the awards that have eluded them thus far.

Johnny Depp plays the title character, a man whose life was taken from him by a corrupt Judge (the awesome Alan Rickman) who had designs for Sweeney’s wife. Sweeney is assaulted, and imprisoned for and unnamed crime just so Judge Turpin could lay the moves on Sweeney’s old lady (they also had a baby girl). Sweeney returns many (fifteen) years later, a changed man. No longer the young, handsome and happy barber of his past, he has changed his name (it was originally Benjamin Barker) and is now a vicious character, dark in nature and bent on revenge – especially when he learns that his wife has poisoned herself and his daughter has been raised (and imprisoned in her room) by Judge Turpin. When I think of the plot I can not help but think of the comparisons to Alexandre Dumas’ “The Count of Monte Cristo”. But here is where it differs, he sets up a new barber shop above Mrs. Lovett’s (Helena Bonham Carter) filthy and always empty meat pie shop. When he starts to launch his plan, and the bodies start stacking up, Mr. Todd and Mrs. Lovett form a very symbiotic relationship. He kills ‘em, she grills ‘em. Well, actually she bakes them, into her meat pies and sells them to her customers; who can’t get enough of them. They seem to see themselves as a cannibalistic Robin Hood team of sorts.

Johnny Depp is great. We all know that now, we all get it. This is yet another in a long line of extraordinary performances for him. There’s probably nothing I could say about his talents that hasn’t been said by everyone you know already, so I won’t bother to try. I will say though, that I never expected him to have such a great singing voice. Some guys have all the luck. For me though, the best part of the film was Helena Bonham Carter. At once beautiful and gross, sadistic and sympathetic, evil and matronly. She is funny, twisted and actually endearing. Tim Burton has a long standing tradition of casting his amorous interests in roles, whether they should be there or not (Lisa Marie), but this does not happen with Carter. She is a wonderful actress and has outdone herself here. Her deadpan is a highlight of the film (she also shows plenty of cleavage). And who knew she had such a lovely voice? The love that blooms through their shared sickness is almost touching, and his gloom during her beautiful and bright fantasy of their possible future life is hilarious.

The supporting cast for the most part is wonderful. Sacha Baron Cohen will easily make you forget he was ever Borat and Alan Rickman is great and devious as always. The young Ed Sanders as Toby, the boy that Sweeney and Mrs. Lovett take in, really does a great job and I would expect we can look forward to seeing him become a Burton regular. My biggest complaint with the film though would be Jamie Campbell Bower who plays a sailor on the boat the Sweeney came in on. While they try desperately to make him pretty he comes off as unsightly and foppish. He ridiculously falls in love with Sweeney’s daughter just by looking at her through a window and pops up now and then seemingly for no reason other than to tell Sweeney where she is, mess stuff up and get on my damn nerves. I could have done without the character in the film at all, but I guess all musicals need their dandy-boys.

I love Tim Burton and look forward to everything he puts out, but that is not to say that he is infallible. See “Planet of the Apes” as evidence. His better movies are always the ones that he seems to find something of himself in. The outcast freak in his early classic “Edward Scissorhands” and the outcast exuberant film maker “Ed Wood”. This movie is just as much Tim Burton as those two it seems. It felt intensely personal, and I got the impression that the finished product was exactly what he wanted it to be. From the opening credits to the final note this felt like pure Burton, unbridled and awash in his vision. The influence of silent cinema is more evident here than ever for him. The dingy sets of Old London could have been home to Jack the Ripper just as easily as Sweeney Todd. The music was entertaining for the most part, and I am not a fan of musicals at all, but I could have done with a number or two less. That said, some of them are entirely engaging and fun and really keep the story sweeping along. Months ago when the studio saw Burton’s cut of the film they demanded he edit it to get a PG-13 rating. He refused, and thank God he did. This movie would not have worked nearly as well without the buckets and buckets and buckets and buckets of blood. As the tension builds we truly needed to catharsis of red, gooey plasma shooting across (and sometimes onto) the screen to feel that release. If this holiday season you are looking for a good, gory, musical with a twisted sense of humor this should fit the bill for you. I haven’t seen so many people dropped on their heads for laughs since I was a substitute kindergarten teacher. Parents might have protested, charges might have been filed, but those kids loved me. Some of them anyway.

RATING: 8/10

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