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Sweeney Todd-The Demon Barber of Fleet Street

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Scott6373:
OK, Rick and I saw it yesterday.  He hated it, and I, after thinking about it for a while, am not far from his opinion.  The original musical is one of my favorites, so I was skeptical after I saw the trailers, and most of my fears were well founded.  While the filmmakers didn't screw around with Sondheim's brilliant score too much (though they completely omitted the chorus parts and replaced them with orchestral versions), it remained essentially in tact.

There's no way to compare or contrast the stage and movie version, so I won't, but as a movie, "Sweeney Todd" was gimmicky, overblown, and almost in poor taste.  The hook for the original musical was the whole "Grand Guignol" concept, but the movie took that way too far.  I am not a squeamish person, but even I was sick of the gore after a while. The singing was atrocious, the acting was wooden and uninspired...even Alan Rickman, who I love looked bored.

I don't know if it was the theater I was in, but the orchestra was so loud, I could barely hear the singing voices, not that that was an entirely bad thing.

Lynne:
What a bummer, Scott!  I was looking forward to this one, mainly because I tend to like Johnny Depp (and Alan Rickman too...).  *sigh*

blacktears:
I loved the film, it was one of the best of the year in my opinion. Depp, Helena, Alan, the entire cast was fantastic!

ednbarby:
Totally agree with you, Scott.  I saw it yesterday, and though I thought it was *good* then, the more I think about it, the more I'm thinking it really wasn't.

I, too, saw it years (and years, and years...) ago onstage and LOVED it.  Not that I'm a huge musical theater fan, but of the 10 or so different musicals I've seen onstage over the years, it is by far my favorite.  Never did quite get Andrew Lloyd Weber's stuff.  Sondheim just speaks to me, for lack of a better way to put it.

So this version was a disappointment, to say the least.

I thought Johnny Depp had a pretty good singing voice, actually.  But again, when I first saw it, the Crane School of Music (part of my college) put it on, and some of the folks in it went on to be professional singers in various venues, so they were fantastic.  The orchestra wasn't too shabby, either.

Tim Burton made some directorial choices that left me cold.  The extreme gore being the biggest offender.  Of course on stage, it isn't nearly so bloody, and most of the macabre stuff is left to the imagination.  That's always the better way to go, IMO.  When you're looking away in horror instead of looking at it dead-on and imagining the horrors, you're missing, somehow, just how twisted it all is.

I got my first clue it maybe wasn't so good when I sat down in my seat on the third day of its opening and I was the first one in the theater with less than a half hour to showtime (hey - I like to get me dead-center seat, you know?)  And then, when the titles rolled, the theater was maybe half-full at best.  I thought "uh-oh."  At this rate, the thing won't make it a month.  At least not in my little podunky town.

Daniel:
I saw it previously, and had not seen the musical theatrical version. So it was my first time. I thought the singing was quite well done, but I understand that Angela Landsbury had previously sung Mrs. Lovett's part, and I think she would have done it much better. It was amusing to me, and even the blood and gore had a strange macabre artistic quality, if a little unrealistic.

Of course, unrealistic is Tim Burton's calling card. If you want something unrealistic, go and see one of his movies. They are always overdramatic, overartistic, and overstated. I knew that going into the movie, so I had prepared myself for a completely wild ride and managed to enjoy the film to some extent. The musical voices were brilliant, except for Johnny's. I only had to close my eyes to really enjoy them that much more.

I think Tim Burton's stuff has a limited audience, however, and don't know how he manages to market his stuff to the general population (or why he would wish to do so).

I also enjoyed the subtle references to the opera, The Barber of Seville.

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