Review of Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (1982) by James K — 16 May 2010

Like all other Tim Burton movies, you can expect beautifully set-up scenes and excellent made-believe characters. This movie of a revengeful barber of Fleet Street in the backdrop of Victorian London is one of the best visual feast in movie industry in the recent years. The characters were overall quite interesting and the casting was again excellent, even though the duo of Helena Bonham Carter and Johnny Depp in a Burton movie (or any other movies) seem very cliche: they definitely were the attraction number one in this movie.

The story revolves around a sad, falsely imprisoned barber, who on return to freedom and his own shop after he lost his wife and daughter, started a murderous rampage, moving toward slicing open the throat of the evil judge who abducted the two women and put him in prison in the first place. River of blood flow from the chair in his barber shop, down to the basement of the meat pie shop downstairs. The chimney spitted out dark clouds of smoke as customers to the barber shop disappear and meat pies appear.

There were lots of blood, pools of blood, even though it was made to look somewhat unlike real blood, seeing blood pouring out from slit-open neck is not a happy sight...thus the title calling Sweeney Todd the demon barber. He is indeed demonic in his design and ambition, from which he who suffered the most is he himself.

As a musical, it is brilliant. The way the story unfolds was slightly predictable but then it IS a musical so it can be excused. Not everyone works great with musical. Oh and that magically imaginery set, where is it again?