Monday, December 24, 2007

SWEENY TODD: THE DEMON BARBER OF FLEET STREET





Musical

PRINCIPAL CAST MEMBERS
Johnny Depp: Sweeney Todd one nasty barber
Alan Rickman: Judge Turpin
Timothy Spall: his assistant Beadly Bamford
Helena Bonham Carter: Mrs. Lovett, proprietor of a meat shop
Sacha Baron Cohen: Signor Adolfo Pirelli

REVIEW
The first thing that strikes you is the desaturated colour, just shades of black and grey throughout except for a couple of minutes right at the beginning. It’s really very depressing but sets the mood oh so beautifully. This is not a fun experience unless you are enjoy watching throats being sliced and are not put off with such things as cockroaches crawling in meat pies served to unwitting customers.

This dark, humourless, gory, gruesome, creepy, icky film about a cruel, scheming, serial killer runs for almost two hours and includes too many interminable musical numbers that are not upbeat nor particularly pleasant listening. What a combination.

I like movies that are entertaining and\or informative. This is neither.

CLASSIFICATION
for graphic bloody violence.

FOR NITPICKERS ONLY
 Sweeney Todd has some white hair which changes from a measly 1” wide patch to a swatch three times that.
 Pirelli’s assistant Toby takes two bites out of a meat pie then we see a heads and shoulders shot of Mrs. Lovett. When the camera returns to Toby the meat pie only has one bite in it.
 The blood on the chin of Joanna’s potential suitor is sometimes two streaks, other times just one.
 From the looks of it these events took place around the time of Jack the Ripper, in 1888. The Italian flag at that time had the Savoyan coat of arms in the center of the white band whereas Pirelli is flying the one adopted some 80 years later with the unification of Italy.
 The sign up on Pirelli’s stage claims he is the barber to the King of Naples. The kingdom ceased to exist some 70 years earlier with the formal union of Naples and Sicily in 1816.

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