Sweeny Todd

Okay, I walked into a movie theater with high hopes for this movie: Sweeney Todd.  Hey, it had Johnny Depp and was directed by Tim Burton, so it had to be good right?  It was the biggest disappointment to my movie going life.

I watched, when I was a kid, Sweeney Todd, when it was broadcast on PBS.  I also sat in the Performing Arts Center, to see Sweeney Todd, when it came up to Anchorage, Alaska. When the chorus starts in the first act and builds you feel the tension. 

 Then when Angela Lansbury enters the stage, you find humor in dislikable subject matter, which was carried into the stage play that I saw in Alaska.  This did not translate into the film version.

Tim Burton's version of the Cannibalism, Revenge and Sloth that Sweeney Todd represents was done over too much.  He went too far.  He focus on the main character of Todd and not Mrs. Lovett was shocking.  Mrs. Lovett, in the broadway play, was humorous.  You could love the character.  I found I hated the Mrs. Lovett, in Tim Burton's movie.  

I like the actress that played Mrs. Lovett, Helen Bonham Carter.  She is an actress that could take on very dramatic rolls, but she did not play Mrs. Lovett well.

This movie does not deserve any critical awards.  Johnny Depp's performance was stiff.  He was seemly uncomfortable playing the serial killer Sweeney Todd.  Maybe it was that he was singing... his voice is passable so it can't be it.  He did not rise to the challenge of breathing humanity in a serial killer.  Without a good Mrs. Lovett, he could not play straight man to the humor of the female lead.

This movie was a bad movie and a waste of time.