Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
2007
***
Director: Tim Burton
Cast: Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter, Alan Rickman, Ed Sanders, Jamie Campbell Bower
Tim Burton brings Stephen Sondheim's gothic stage musical to the screen. It's a story of a barber who returns to Victorian London to seek revenge on a sinister judge who locked him away for 15 years. The stylised visuals, the sung dialogue and the cartoonish violence strip any sense of realism from the proceedings and the characters. What remains is an entertaining and beautifully designed but instantly forgettable freak show. Sondheim's lyrics are amusing but his tunes aren't very memorable.
