SWEENEY TODD: THE DEMON BARBER OF FLEET STREET (2007) **1/2 An entirely incongruous melange of harmonizing vocals, dingy old London and gushing jugulars. You have to like that. Well, not like it exactly, but notice it anyway.there's no need to patronize, it goes out of its way to be unique and dammit it made it! Good. The temptation is to say that Tim Burton is one of the few contemporary directors who would have been right at home back in the black & white days, but I'm not sure that's right: he does delight so in just the dash or splash of color.you know, a feather here, a jugular gushing down a sewer hole there. If he was someone else-and I'm glad he isn't-doing period pieces.he would probably win five Oscars every time he did one about Charles Dickens' London. Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter probably aren't the first couple the rest of us might think of when casting a musical, but they do have good voices and man!, do they look right for a psycho-couple! I think it's fair and right to say that they're most effective when they're not singing, maybe even not talking-probably when they're just exchanging terminal glances.but the overall effect is a gloriously horrid imbalance that couldn't have been attained by casting, you know, Robert Plant and Whitney Houston. Althought that might be interesting too, thinking on it for a second. Burton & Depp are missing their third amigo; Danny Elfman made redundant by the fact that they're working off a Stephen Sondheim score sheet. Opinions will vary wildly, but what this means to me is that there won't be any of the wild genius involved, and something less of the schmaltzy nonsense that almost always accompanies it. Sondheim's stuff is best when vocals are intertwined, and either Depp/Carter or the sound man aren't quite professional enough to work this to greatest effect, but there's got to be singing and these are the songs that have got to be sung. There's always a trade-off somewhere. Alan Rickman's such a good actor, I enjoyed his performance (in that sense of loathing that he meant to inspire), but it concerns me a little bit seeing him veer this strongly back towards Professor Snape turf.
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