Why Must they Sing so much?

What's Good for Stage makes for Strange Movie
by
Morgan P Salvo
 

Salutations to Johnny Depp and Tim Burton for attacking head on a new combination: the slasher musical. The problem is, I’m not sure the two go together…

From a slasher movie perspective, this movie gets the job done. There’s tons o’ blood. It’s like a renaissance tribute to old black and white horror movies and Grand Guignol (at its finest).Virtually a sing-along blood bath with clever lyrics and go-for the jugular arrangements. Burton even took artistic-license and picked an off-red for the blood spurting, evoking old Technicolor films, literally raining blood at times.
Blood and guts withstanding, there’s the singing. I knew people were going to sing in this movie, I just wasn’t sure how much. Well, they sing constantly. It may have been better on stage, but on film I lose focus when the characters sing. Last time I checked people talk to one another when communicating. As soon as a soliloquy erupted I found it distracting. But it is a musical after all.

Based on Stephen Sondheim's Broadway hit, the demented revenge saga involves a barber Billy Barker (Depp) who is wrongly convicted and sentenced to jail by an evil judge Turpin (Rickman). Barker escapes to reek havoc on Turpin, who has taken custody of Barker’s daughter. In fulfilling his need for vengeance, Barker takes his misplaced rage out on the townspeople by “shaving them”, or more precisely, slicing their necks. He meets up with a meat-pie maker, Mrs. Lovett (Bonham Carter) and rents the upstairs to conduct his dastardly deeds. They dispose of the bodies through an elaborate sliding barber chair/trapdoor to the basement, housing the huge meat grinder and furnace, where they bake them into the pies. Business skyrockets. The sub-plot involves a love interest between sailor (Jamie Campbell Bower) and Turpin’s ward (Jayne Wisener) and her inevitable rescue.
Bonham Carter is almost adorable in her wickedness, while Depp hams it up as the maniac, with inner hatred seething in his guts and a bride of Frankenstein hairdo. Sardonically frustrated, he can never seduce the judge into his lair to enact his sweet revenge so he waits… and sings. Sondheim has said he prefers actors that sing rather than singers that act, and it’s easy to see why. Depp is impressive with a kind of soft rock star bravado ala David Bowie. The main standout is Sacha Baron Cohen (Borat/Ali G) as Pirelli, exhibiting actual vocal skills and wearing a matador suit with package-revealing stretch pants. Unnecessary, but hilarious.
Everything in this gory movie looks cool, the sets, the extras (extra rats, extra cockroaches, extra blood), the gothic look of the two leads. Some of the songs, such as “ode to my friends”(his gleaming razors) and “which pie would taste best” (priest or lawyer) had me in stitches.

With nothing but admiration and respect for the genius involved in making this project and its house of horrors atmosphere, I just can’t get behind it. It’s not their fault it’s just the genre. Besides, it doesn’t matter how many throat-slashings they throw at you, when they start singing about it, well, then it just becomes cute.

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber Of Fleet Street
Starring Johnny Depp, Helena Bonhman Carter, Alan Rickman,
Directed by Tim Burton
 2 stars