Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
starring Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter, Alan Rickman, Timothy Spall, Sacha Baron Cohen, Jamie Campbell Boer, Laura Michelle Kelly and Edward Sanders
screenplay by John Logan
directed by Tim Burton
This is a typical Tim Burton movie - weirdly gothic. It’s even weirder to see Johnny Depp in a musical, but he does it well. And Alan Rickman! Alan Rickman in a musical? Singing? Are you kidding me? But whether you think the film is good or bad, it is a strong plus in the film credits of these two actors. For me, though, it is eminently forgettable.
Depp plays a London barber bent of revenge upon the magistrate who wrongly convicted and transported him years earlier for entirely lascivious reasons. Returning to grimy Victorian London under an alias he sets about serial murder in his shop above a restaurant. He takes up with the woman who runs the shop (Helena Bonham Carter) and uses her meat pies to dispose of the evidence. (It reminds us what a rarity meat was in ordinary people’s diets back then.)