Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
Studio: Warner Bros.
Rated: R
Cast: Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter
Director: Tim Burton
WorkNameSort: Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
Our Rating: 5.00
That Sweeney Todd exists on the stage is still something of a marvel of artistic autonomy and the most unlikely of Tony award-winning successes. And the movie, directed with intoxicating fidelity by Tim Burton, is an invigorating experience that ranks among the best stage-to-screen translations ever filmed. Rarely has the dichotomy of beauty and grotesquerie been explored so thoroughly within the geography of a single scene – a single shot even, as Sweeney slits throats and sings notes with equal passion amid Burton’s Gothic London squalor. Even the spilling of blood is handled with stylistic precision, cascading fountains of splatter art spurting from Sweeney’s numerous victims. The film’s dream cast features Johnny Depp in a performance that far surpasses the put-on affect of his Oscar-nominated Jack Sparrow, reaching new heights in both vocal ability and comic timing. Helena Bonham Carter is deliciously evil as the baker of cannibalistic pies, and Sacha Baron Cohen’s turn as a snake oil peddler is unmissable.

This article appears in Dec 19-25, 2007.