Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street B+

Sweeney Todd is a bloody, funny, dark songfest that surprisingly manages to hold itself together. More surprising, it also gives Tim Burton his most focused film since Batman as he examines revenge and its ability to tear a man apart. In his filming of this Sondheim stage musical of the same name, Burton brings his keen visual eye and usual drab palette of emerald tones, grays, and black to rainy 19th Century London.

Burton regular Johnny Depp is predictably good with a surprisingly strong voice in the title role. Todd was a young barber with a wife and infant daughter when he was falsely imprisoned by the lecherous Judge Turpin (Alec Rickman). Having escaped prison after fifteen years, Todd returns to London hoping to recover his family. When he finds his wife gone and daughter Johanna (the beautiful Jayne Wisener) a ward of the judge, he’s engulfed in hatred and revenge, first funneling his emotions towards the judge, but soon extending his wrath to all humanity. Equally strong with a more difficult role is fellow Burton regular Helena Bonham Carter as café owner Mrs. Lovett. She takes Todd’s customers and grinds them into meat for pies, but it’s Todd himself she’s after, determined to turn him back into a twisted version of the family man he once was.

Some have said There Will Be Blood is the oddest film of the year, but for my money this treat is. While the dark palette and excessive blood spray eventually get old, the macabre laughs never stop coming. I could have used a couple less songs (always the case with me and musicals) and a little more back story, but this is still dark fun with an unexpectedly potent ending. B+