December 23, 2007

• Sweeney Todd, a review

  Full title: Sweeney
  Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street

  

  This was actually a pretty good movie. It was another one of
  Tim Burton's good, gothic movies. He sure does a lot of those. I think it's his
  niche. I'm sure he wants to direct more movies like Peewee's Big Adventure, but he
  rarely gets the chance to because of the expectations of his fans. I think he
  let a little bit of it out with Charlie
  and the Chocolate Factory, but he needs a larger outlet. Perhaps
  he could direct a remake of one of those Barbie CG movies. Anyway, I digress.

  This movie is dark. A lot of people say it's gory, but it
  wasn't too bad. All he really did was slit throats. If he wanted to be really
  gory, he would disembowel them or something. I guess he would need to change
  professions, though. That's another thing. This film finally gave barbers their
  time in the sun. There are very few good movies with barbers in them. Sure,
  there was Barber Shop,
  but that was terrible, so it doesn't count. This was actually a good movie that
  stars a barber. Granted, it shows the barber slitting the throat of people, but
  you have to take the bad with the good. Again, I digress.

  The story was superb. It was all about revenge and how it
  completely consumed old Benjamin, who arbitrarily changes his name to Sweeney
  Todd. I hate to use an old Dave Barry stand-by, but I should point out that his
  name could be rearranged to say "weeded stony". I'm not entirely sure
  if this is a coincidence. Anyway, the main theme revolves around how revenge
  can thoroughly consume a person. It also makes an interesting point in the way
  death does not care what social class you come from. The gray atmosphere of
  London builds upon these darker themes swimmingly. It was all very enjoyable.
  There were several points where I knew what was going to happen before it
  happened, but this actually made the scenes all the better. I'm not a fan of
  musicals, but at least the songs were bearable. They did break up the otherwise
  monotone manner of the characters. A couple of them were catchy, though. The
  ending was fantastic. I love when there is no denouement. It just ended.
  I'm lovin' it.

  It wasn't a perfect movie. I got bored during a few
  scenes, but fortunately there weren't many. I also didn't like Ms. Lovett's
  character design. This is just a personal thing. She was trying to be gothic,
  to great effect, but I thought it was a little over the top. It wasn't
  particularly funny either, but I really didn't expect much humor in the first
  place. On the whole, I would give the film a solid: 8.976239034 / 10.0

  • 5:50 am
  • 4 Comments