Sweeney Todd

"Sweeney Todd"

Directedy by Tim Burton

I know that this isn't exactly a new release, but I just saw it for the first time in DVD and wanted to write about it.

First of all, I'm a huge Tim Burton fan, and am even more of a fan of films that Tim Burton and Johnny Depp do together. This is the sixth film that they have done together, and by this point, I think it's clear that Tim Burton knows which characters Johnny Depp was born to play, better than anyone.

I hate to say it, but "Sweeney Todd" kind of disappointed me. I thought the characters were perfect. Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter were both amazing. And of course the plot is good, I remember seeing Sweeney Todd on stage many years ago, and have always loved the story.

One of the elements that disappointed me was the overuse of computer graphics. The CG was overdone, and not tastefully. We have all this wonderful life-action cinematography, the dark bluish-gray look that Tim Burton is famous for, mixed in with completely computer generated shots that look as if they are from a video game. I don't know if they were intended to look real or if the 3D animated look is what they were going for, but it didn't work for me. I would have preferred the film to be entirely live action. There wasn't much need to use any CG that I could see, and in the case that they do need to use it, they should have used it sparingly enough to not make the whole shot look animated. I thought that this cheapened the look of the whole film.

I'm still not sure if I liked the singing or not. Obviously, Sweeney Todd was meant to be a musical. I appreciated the fact that this was Johnny Depp's first attempt at singing, and he did a great job. I like the fact that it's a musical, but I guess I would have liked to have seen a bit more drama and less music. Many of the songs were very powerful and brought even more to the story, and others felt like they were just singing for the sake of singing, in scenes that I really would have liked to have seen without the song.

And lastly, I felt that Johnny Depp's and Helena Bonham Carter's characters were the only fully developed characters. Everyone else was either depicted as a villain or a good guy, but we weren't really given the full identities of anyone else.

Overall, I did like the movie. I think that my disappointment came from having such high expectations from the director and actors and story. A very good film, but not my favorite of the films that Tim Burton and Johnny Depp have done together.

TIM BURTON & JOHNNY DEPP FILM LIST (Favorite to least favorite):

1: Edward Scissorhands

2: Ed Wood

3: Sleepy Hollow

4: Sweeney Todd

5: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

6: The Corpse Bride