There Will Be Some Blood

In the dramatic musical Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, Johnny Depp’s skin is made up to appear dull, ghoulish, and lifeless – a description I was surprised to discover I could apply to the movie as well.

Granted, I knew Sweeney Todd wasn’t going to be a spectacle à la Dreamgirls (a musical for which I didn’t care that much, either) Chicago, or Moulin Rouge!, but I expected it to have a show-stopper or two.

I suppose you could consider Helena Bonham Carter’s turn as (human) meat pie-making Mrs. Lovett as a show-stopper of sorts, she’s so wicked.

But it’s not her movie, you know.

Per usual, Tim Burton brings visual panache to the revenge story of a naïve man unjustly imprisoned on the order of a lecherous judge who coveted his beautiful wife, and who many years later returns, changed, to exact his revenge.

That’s all fine and dandy – I appreciate Burton’s eye quite a bit – but he could have given us a little bit of the old razzle dazzle, or at the very least a higher level of camp.

For weeks all I could hear in anticipation of the arrival of Sweeney Todd in theaters was how bloody good it was – emphasis on “bloody.”

Uhhh…I never felt as thirsty for the red stuff as I did watching this movie. Yes, there were some gushes of the darn thing, but I wanted more.

Even more alarming, I didn’t think Depp’s star shined bright in this one.

He sings (more than just alright, I suppose), but doesn’t dance, and even worse, he just doesn’t engage.

We meet him briefly as the-world-is-his-oyster Benjamin Barker, before he declares he “will have vengeance” as Sweeney Todd.

But it’s not like I rooted for him, at least not until the end when the tragedy that is his life became clear.

It is easy to say that a filmmaker and an actor never have been better suited for a project before, but obviously, it is harder to say that the result has left something to be desired.

I don’t have that problem.

My Rating **

Photo: DreamWorks Pictures.