Scooter Chronicles

This past weekend, Marcia and I experienced the movie version of “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street”, directed by Tim Burton, and starring Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter.

Now, I didn’t know the actual story going in. Neither did Marcia. However, we knew the basis of the story. Benjamin Barker, a young London barber, is married to the beautiful Lucy, and they have an infant daughter Joanna. Judge Turpin (Alan Rickman) decides that he must have Lucy for himself, so sends off Benjamin on a false charge. Fifteen years later, Benjamin returns, renaming himself as Sweeney Todd. He visits the place where him and his wife once lived, on the second floor above Mrs. Lovett’s pie shop (Bonham Carter), only to be told that Lucy poisoned herself, and that his daughter is now the ward of Turpin. He decides to extract his revenge, and later enlists Mrs. Lovett’s help.

With this known, and with Burton directing, I expected it to be very dark and quite possibly bloody, seeing as the movie was rated R. What I found interesting was seeing quite a few senior citizens in the theater, and hoping they weren’t expecting the same version that starred Angela Lansbury as Mrs. Lovett. Because if they were, they quite possibly had to turn their head many, many times during the movie. Heck, they would have gotten a good warning during the opening credits!

As a rule, I don’t like musicals. I went to see this, because I really admire both Depp and Burton’s work, and they make a great team (this is the six movie they have done together). Unfortunately I didn’t expect to still have to hear so many songs. It still didn’t detract from the movie overall though. With it’s very dark comedic story, it made it better then your average musical.

Depp’s singing was pretty good. From what I have read, Bonham Carter had some extensive voice lessons prior, but they paid off. They limited Rickman (maybe it is this way in the original musical) to very few lines of singing. It was probably for the best. He still plays a good villain, and one that you can sympathize with, or at least portray that they truly believe that what they are doing is right and good. “But wait, isn’t Sweeney Todd the villain?”, you ask. Oh yeah, so we have two. And you can really get behind Todd’s feelings, and Depp delivers them with utter venom. But it’s all good in the end. Well, the overall result that the film was presenting that is. ; )

I read on IMDB that there is a major flaw with the layout of the building, and I am a bit surprised that I didn’t see this while watching. Maybe this is credit to my being so into the movie that I couldn’t be bothered to notice. Looking back at it, it bothers me that someone wouldn’t take this into account. But if I missed it, then it is quite possible it wouldn’t bother many others while watching the movie.

Given that I haven’t seen the original musical, I am not sure what others would think of it. I do feel that many like me that don’t like musicals but like Depp and Burton will still find a lot to enjoy about this movie.