'Sweeney Todd': A sharp adaptation with a comedic edge

By Claudia Puig, USA TODAY
There will be blood — seeping, spurting and splattering — in this mesmerizing and highly entertaining film adaptation of Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street.
But unlike more realistic violent fare, the gore in this gloomy Gothic marvel feels exaggeratedly theatrical and a vital part of the melodramatic mayhem. Sweeney Todd is the perfect marriage of filmmaker and material. Director Tim Burton has adapted Stephen Sondheim's Tony Award-winning musical in a darkly clever and comical fashion.

Johnny Depp is ideally cast as the barber who transforms himself from the embittered, falsely imprisoned Benjamin Barker to the demonic, vengeful Sweeney Todd. He's undeniably one of the best actors of his generation, and there are hints of his past collaborations with Burton in his performance. You'll catch glimpses of Edward Scissorhands, Ed Wood and Victor from The Corpse Bride.

The production design is intriguingly monochromatic and grimly gorgeous. The musical numbers play out compellingly. It's notable that some of the best musical performances are by actors who are not trained singers, such as Depp, Alan Rickman (as the nefarious judge who preys upon the barber's wife and daughter) and Sacha Baron Cohen. Cohen, as Pirelli, a flamboyant Italian barber and Todd's archrival, nearly steals the show.

Rounding out the cast is Helena Bonham Carter as Mrs. Lovett. The musical interlude in which she decries her inedible meat pies and rhythmically swats away large insects is a hoot.

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After escaping from 15 years in prison, Barker is intent upon wreaking vengeance on Judge Turpin (Rickman) and his sycophantic henchman, Beadle Bamford (Timothy Spall), who sent him away on a trumped-up charge in order to steal Barker's wife (Laura Michelle Kelly) and baby daughter, Johanna.

For the rare person who is not familiar with the squeamishly funny plot, set in the late 1700s, the real fun begins when Barker/Todd panics and slits the throat of Pirelli after he threatens to reveal Todd's true identity as an escaped prisoner. Mrs. Lovett, ever lamenting the high price of meat, sees the fleshy corpse as an opportunity to augment her pie fillings. Thus, her meat pie business is rejuvenated as a result of Todd's murderous barbering enterprise. The musical crescendos on a wave of witty cannibalistic references, including the best production number, A Little Priest.

Fleshing out the cast is Toby (Edward Sanders), Pirelli's former child assistant who ends up helping Mrs. Lovett in her thriving pie establishment.

There also is a romance between Johanna (Jayne Wisener), now a young lady, and a young sailor (Jamie Campbell Bower). It's an emotional story about the madness of revenge, but the romantic elements are a distant second to the tale's horrific goings-on.

Burton's fascination with the macabre and the mischievous has found a perfect outlet in this lavish Grand Guignol slaughterfest.

Sweeney Todd is a bloody good, even haunting, re-imagining of the Broadway musical, with its emphasis on the jugular, not the heart.