Sweeney Todd - The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
by Tim Burton
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DVD details
Actor: Alan Rickman, Edward Sanders, Helena Bonham Carter, Johnny Depp, Timothy SpallDirector: Tim Burton
Brand: PARAMOUNT PICTURES
Cinematographer: Dariusz Wolski
Composer: Stephen Sondheim
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.1; English (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); French (Dubbed), Dolby Digital 5.1; Spanish (Dubbed), Dolby Digital 5.1
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, NTSC, Widescreen
Picture Format: 2.35:1
Running Time: 116 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2008-04-01
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: Dreamworks Video
DVD Reviews of Sweeney Todd - The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
DVD Review: The best musical ever
Summary: 5 Stars
I asbolutely loved this musical and I rarely like musicals. Tim Burton did a fanastic job directing this and I wasn't expecting a muscial from Tim Burton to be this good. Johnny Depp was excellent as Sweeney Todd and Helen Bonham Carter was pure perfection as the insane people inot pie making Mrs. Lovett. This is an absoluteely wonderful.DVD Review: George Hearn &Angela Lansbury's version was better...
Summary: 4 Stars
I first came across the story of Sweeney Todd several years ago when my wandering eyes fell across the 1982 Broadway production with George Hearn and Angela Lansbury. I was absolutely floored by it. :) So when I heard that Tim Burton (oh, how I love your work) and Johnny Depp were getting together to remake it, I nearly fainted in joy.
Sadly, I was expecting them to out do the 1982 version I had loved for so long, but just didn't feel they had accomplished it.
On the other hand, I did enjoy the film and was surprised at Depp's singing ability despite his voice not carrying the desperation of George Hearn. And I would like to salute Helena Bonham Carter for her excellent portrayal of Mrs. Lovett.
DVD Review: 3 stars out of 4
Summary: 4 Stars
The Bottom Line:
Though Burton's version of Sweeney Todd sometimes seems gratuitously gory, it does a good job opening up the musical for the screen and features a couple of perfect performances in Bonham Carter's Mrs. Lovett (who I blasphemously prefer to Angela Lansbury) and Cohen's Pirelli; it's not a flawless film but it's a sucessful one.
DVD Review: Is This As Bizarre As They Say? Yup!
Summary: 4 Stars
If you haven't seen this film and are expecting something bizarre from the collaboration director Tim Burton and actor Johnny Depp.....well, you're going to get it!
This is different......mainly because most of the dialog is sung, like an opera. However, at least half of that is half spoken-half sung so it isn't really operatic.
Burton displays his usual dark visions and wonderful cinematography and Depp plays his normal strange, dark character. I can't say that all the singing appealed to me, but the actors did a credible job with it. In fact, Depp, Helena Bonham Carter and company surprised me how well they all sang considering they aren't known for that talent.
One other major warning: some of the bloody scenes are pretty graphic. There will be a number of people who will turn their heads at a few scenes. That doesn't start for awhile, however, as the first third of film sets up the premise.
What I found most appealing was the comedy. The wildest character was "Signor Adolfo Pirelli," a guy pretending to be a famous Italian barber and played - incredibly - by Sacha Baron Cohen....yes, "Borat," himself! I only wish his role had been a little bigger. The other guy who made me laugh was Timothy Spall as "Beadle Bamford." He was so bad, he was good! Some of the lyrics in the songs also were humorous. All the comedy is a mixture of dark and light stuff.
It seems like most of the scenes in this film were either very dark and foreboding or filled with outrageous dark humor. There wasn't much middle ground. I suspect you'll either stick with the film and enjoy it or be tempted to toss it in the garbage can before it's over. Either way, you'll have a definite opinion of this movie!
DVD Review: Don't take it too seriously
Summary: 4 Stars
I thought that the movie was dark with a bit of Tim Burton's dark comedy. His casting again of Helena Bonham Carter and Johnny Depp whom without the movie would not have been so craftily carried out. The casting of Sasha Cohen was hilarious and whom else could have played that part so well? There is blood, but it is so fake. The love story between the young man and Sweeney's daughter was a good distraction. Alan Rickman as usual great.
Description of Sweeney Todd - The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
Johnny Depp and Tim Burton join forces again in a big-screen adaptation of Stephen Sondheim's award-winning musical thriller "Sweeney Todd." Depp stars in the title role as a man unjustly sent to prison who vows revenge, not only for that cruel punishment, but for the devastating consequences of what happened to his wife and daughter. When he returns to reopen his barber shop, Sweeney Todd becomes the Demon Barber of Fleet Street who "shaved the heads of gentlemen who never thereafter were heard from again." Joining Depp is Helena Bonham Carter as Mrs. Lovett, Sweeney's amorous accomplice, who creates diabolical meat pies. The cast also includes Alan Rickman, who portrays the evil Judge Turpin, who sends Sweeney to prison and Timothy Spall as the Judge's wicked associate Beadle Bamford and Sacha Baron Cohen is a rival barber, the flamboyant Signor Adolfo Pirelli.After years of rumors, it turns out that Tim Burton was the perfect visionary to film Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, Stephen Sondheim's Broadway masterpiece, and the result is a macabre and moving musical movie as enthralling as anything Burton has ever done. The show's mix of gothic horror, Grand Guignol, very dark humor, and witty and beautiful music never was the stuff of traditional musical comedy, but it's a powerful work, and perhaps the richest of the late 20th century. In the movie, Burton's frequent collaborator, Johnny Depp, plays Todd, a wronged man whose lust for revenge drives him to murder (an 19th-century legend who has been traced to a real-life barber). Helena Bonham Carter, another Burton mainstay, is Mrs. Lovett, the barber's partner-in-unspeakable-crime. It's no surprise that Depp is an excellent choice to convey Todd's brooding intensity and volcanic rage, but he can also sing a score that is so challenging it has often played in opera houses (though not with the same style as the Broadway original, Len Cariou, and he occasionally lapses into pop style). Bonham Carter is small of voice and lacks the humor of the original Broadway Lovett, Angela Lansbury, but she sings on pitch, in rhythm, and in character at the same time, which is no small feat for a Sondheim show. Aficionados will regret the loss of certain musical passages--"The Ballad of Sweeney Todd" is just an instrumental overture and the chorus is gone altogether, among others--but the reassuring presence of orchestrator Jonathan Tunick and conductor Paul Gemignani ensures that the music feels right and sounds great. And the film's depiction of a Victorian London hellhole--with cinematography by Dariusz Wolski and costumes by Colleen Atwood--also looks and feels right.
The excellent cast is filled out by Alan Rickman as the villainous Judge Turpin, Timothy Spall as his seedy Beadle, Sacha Baron Cohen (Borat) as a rival barber, Jamie Campbell Bower as the young lover Anthony, Jayne Wisener as his object of affection, and Ed Sanders as the young Toby. For fans of Tim Burton and Johnny Depp who don't think they like musicals, Sweeney Todd should be a revelation (though not for the squeamish, as the gore is intense and completely appropriate). For fans of Broadway and Sondheim, it's hard to imagine getting a better adaptation than this. The fact that there's no newly composed Oscar-bait song sung by a Josh Groban-type over the end credits only makes it better. --David Horiuchi
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