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*** (out of ****) It's tough to be ruthless. I read on Wikipedia that, while adapting " Sweeney Todd" from a 3-hour Broadway musical into a 2-hour film, director Tim Burton, composer Stephen Sondheim, and the film's writer and music producers shortened songs, cut songs, and deleted narration, all to keep the plot moving. Yet as much work as they did, and as admirable as that work is, Burton's otherwise splendid film adaptation of " Sweeney Todd" STILL feels sluggish at times. Broadway music and lyrics provide information that's necessary on Broadway, when the actors are a mile away and we can't see their faces, and we don't have things like flashbacks and mise-en-scene to provide information. Yet in a movie, where we do have those things, much of the singing becomes redundant. We can SEE how sad / in love / lusty / angry you are, it's not really necessary to sing about it. Also, with all the visual information and music, the orchestrations in "Sweeney Todd" become a little overpowering. Fewer instruments would serve better; maybe cut out the winds, the way the score for " Psycho" is all strings, although I realize that makes me sound like the Emperor from " Amadeus" complaining there are too many notes. Compare "Sweeney Todd" to a made-for-the-screen musical like De Palma's " Phantom of the Paradise." In part because, man, that movie is HIGH. Anyway, at 2 hours I liked "Sweeney Todd." At 90 minutes I would have loved it. Still, " Sweeney Todd" is a splendid flick, probably Tim Burton's most self-confident since " Ed Wood." It tells of how our man Sweeney (Johnny Depp) comes back from wrongful imprisonment all set to get his revenge against the immoral judge (Alan Rickman) who took his wife and child and sent him up the river. He and an old friend (ghoulishly lovely Helena Bonham Carter) open a pie-shop. They sell pies filled with people Sweeney chops up in his barbershop. Sweeney and the judge are sort-of moral equivalents; unlike the self-righteous abuser-of-power villain type that I'm getting pretty tired of, Rickman's judge knows that he's scum and thinks of the whole world as being just as bad as he is, in need of swift execution. Sweeney's diatribe against the whole world, and how everyone deserves to get his throat slit, sounds an awful lot like the judge. Anyway, Tim Burton directs, so everything looks great. And there's lots of blood. Copyright © 2011, 2007 by Peter Kovic (aka Friday + Saturday Night Movie Critic) Starring Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter, Alan Rickman, and Timothy Spall Directed by Tim Burton 2007 R |
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