Singing and acting up a storm, Johnny Depp gives a cutting-edge performance as the Victorian mad barber Sweeney Todd
Singing and acting up a storm, Johnny Depp gives a cutting-edge performance as the Victorian mad barber Sweeney Todd.
He gets into some close shaves as he seeks revenge on London’s evil Judge Turpin (Alan Rickman) and turns his clients into meat pies, aided and abetted by baker Mrs Lovett (Helena Bonham Carter).
In the hands of director Tim Burton, Stephen Sondheim’s great musical is turned into a fabulous-looking, if very gory, movie.
Anyone familiar with the stage version will notice that several songs have been cut entirely from the movie, while some others only appear in an abridged form.
This doesn’t affect the flow of the story as much as one might imagine, but reduces the importance of the romantic subplot involving Todd’s daughter, and forces the focus back onto Sweeney and his lethal razors.
Depp and Carter couldn’t be better - and nor could Rickman, Timothy Spall, as the fussy, creepy Beadle, and Sacha Baron Cohen, who’s funny and effective as dodgy crimper Signor Adolfo Pirelli.
