Not Coming to a Theater Near You

Sweeney Todd / USA / 2007

As I noted in my Review of 2007, last year was a banner one for severe critical overreaction, and that was before I’d even seen No Country For Old Men. Even more bizarre is the reception granted to this, Tim Burton’s daft, overwrought adaptation of Stephen Sondheim’s stage musical. Which isn’t to say it’s dreadful, there’s a lot to like here, from Johnny Depp’s Bowie-does-Newley singing voice to the twisty, restless camerawork, from Sacha Baron Cohen’s frustratingly brief cameo to the gratifyingly slapped on lashings of stage gore.

But there’s a hell of a lot more that’s wrong. Firstly, the songs, if you can even call them that. Nothing about them is memorable, the lyrics are almost without exception weak and forced, and the orchestration is ludicrously OTT. The romantic subplot offends most grievously, offering up warbling love ballads sung by two hideously bland stage school graduates. The CGI effects are muddy and bland, depicting a hopelessly derivative, pseudo- Dickensian vision of olde London. And the characters within are equally unmemorable, lacking all but the most base motivation, and impossible to sympathise with. Frankly, I don’t think anything decent could have been created from such ghastly beginnings (the thought of seeing this on the stage, without Johnny Depp or Alan Rickman, fills me with abject horror), but this is another pretty firm nail in the coffin of Tim Burton’s once unimpeachable credibility.

by Tom Huddleston | Source: 35mm print
04 Feb 2008 12:25 PM | Comments (2)

Comments / 2 total / Submit Comment

1. Georges / 4 February 2008 / 3:16 PM

   I concur that there was most certainly a critical overreaction to this film. However, I think you overreact in the opposite direction.
   To refer to the original stage production and composition with the phrase, “ghastly beginnings” is unfair. Stephen Sondheim won a Tony and a Grammy in 1979 for “Sweeny Todd.” He’s won numerous other awards for his work. Hell, the man has been one of six writers in history to be awarded the Pulitzer Prize for a work in musical theater. You don’t have to like him or enjoy his music or lyrics, but I think that you should recognize that he is an individual considered within his community as possessing a great talent and that “Sweeny Todd” is regarded as one of his greater contributions.
   Save your “abject horror” for witnessing an event more truly horrifying.

2. tom / 5 February 2008 / 4:46 AM / URL

   Hey, I know bad music when I hear it, and I often hear it at the Grammys, and i’m guessing the Tonys as well. Mainstream musical theatre is a defunct, embarrassing pseudo-artform that should have been put out to pasture back in the 50’s, saving us such heinous criminal acts as those committed by Rice & Lloyd-Webber, the authors of Rent and Chicago and, yes, Stephen Sondheim. Round ‘em all up, I say.