I wanna know what movie you saw, because the Sweeney Todd I saw, Depp was more brilliant and amazing than ever before!

If there's one thing that is overpopulated in this world it is the ranks of "amateur" movie critics. Get a life and let people enjoy what they want without having to read your comments (for which you get PAID to write?)!

Ray Greene writes:

Well, okay, Anonymous, but for you to have already seen a movie that doesn't come out for another week you must get paid to do something to, probably by a studio. Troll perhaps?

In any case, I actually came on here to add an addendum to this review for the theatre buffs out there, which is to say that I am aware of the fact that the great maestro, Stephen Sondheim, has vehemently denied the Brechtian influences observers have spotted in SWEENEY TODD pretty much since its debut in 1979. I'm not going to question his sincerity when he does this, and I can think of no more annoying thing for one genius to read than that his work is in some ways reminiscent of another's.

But the fact remains that SWEENEY is based on and adapted from an OVERTLY Brechtian source: the Christopher Bond play Sondheim happened to see almost accidentally in 1973 and was so inspired by he spent six years adapting it as a musical. Here is how Bond's bio read in the latest (quite marvelous and extremely Brechtian) Broadway adaptation of the show:

CHRISTOPHER BOND (Adaptor), an actor/director/writer, wrote Sweeney Todd for the Stoke-on-Trent experimental Theatre. [So, presumably not in the 19th century.] He took Brecht's Man Is Man, renamed it Man Eats Man and applied it to the public domain one-act folk play of Sweeney Todd by George Dibdin Pitt who stole the story from a short story "The String of Pearls: A Romance" in the Victorian gossip magazine Penny Dreadful.

That gene-splicing adaptation of Brecht to Penny Dreadful is the source of the show. Brecht isn't just an influence, he's a source.

Although I can see some Brechtian themes in the stage play, I can in no way see how "A Man's a Man" is related to anything having to do with Sweeney Todd. Are you thinking of a different play?

Also, would you please explain how Depp's Sweeney Todd is "Jack Sparrow without the irony". I haven't seen the movie yet, but I've seen a number of the clips and I fail to see any resemblance there. You didn't make a case for that clever-sounding quote.

To be honest, the Brechtian elements of the original production rested squarely on the shoulders of Harold Prince. He shoe-horned what Sondheim wrote into a signature "concept" that he was famous for.

The sweeping romanticism of the actual music and text have little in common with Brecht. In fact the only quibbles with the original mounting was that Prince had laid on the Industrial Revolution through a Brechtian sensibility with little subtlety and mixed results.

The fact that Sondheim took his inspiration from heated horror films and the music of Bernard Herrmann speaks less to Brecht than to Tim Burton.

It's interesting that the Ballad, which IS a Brechtian conceit has been removed from the film. In the original production, when during the finale the entire cast pointed at the audience with flared nostrils insisting that we were all Sweeney, their lack of conviction was palpable.

Given the composer's enthusiasm about the movie, I'd tend to trust his opinion before mine, or any well intended critic.

Interesting, well-conceived review this is, one that takes a true artistic stand on the latest Depp/Burton consortium.

That anonymous writer of the second comment deserves a swift kick out of the Box Office site.

forgive me for signing in "anonymously" to the site, but I will leave my name and my own multi-authored blog as evidence of my existence.

while I can see many of the points you are making, I have to disagree. call me callous, and forgive my inexperience and youth for having never seen Sweeney Todd onstage, but nothing in this movie made me think of Darfur or human atrocities. the most wonderful thing about it was that it was so utterly captivating. I could think of nothing else, no point of comparison, simply the sublime work (and the masterful acting of Depp) before me. I personally hated the Pirates trilogy, and it bothered me enormously that such a gifted actor might only get recognition after portraying a pirate-swathed human Goofy (the specific Disney character, not the general term).

I think in Sweeney Todd, he redeems himself completely, and while the film version might be missing a social conscience, it brims with sympathy for the devil and genuine human emotion. I think that Depp as Sweeney Todd is the acting match of a lifetime, and I just must say in general that I respectfully disagree.

(the website for which I write, www.retrolowfi.com, will be posting a review the day the film comes out.) plugs aplenty!sq

I look forward to reading your review. But if you don't see parallels to genocide when a character declares war on the entire human species, or to Auschwitz and Buchenwald when slaughtered humans are pushed into ovens and then repurposed as items of daily utility, perhaps you can see how other observers might.

response to cass:

Your quibble is with Christopher Bond, who wrote the adaptation Sondheim built his work out of. Those are Bond's words about his source, not mine (perhaps its the onstage psychological deterioration of the protagonist that equates SWEENEY with MAN EQUALS MAN?). Personally, I think TODD as originally conceived is closer to one of the real epic theatre pieces like MOTHER COURAGE or MAHOGANNY or JUNGLE OF THE CITIES -- not in terms of its event structure but because of the complex issue of audience identification and complicity. Burton eliminates the prologue and epilogue numbers by the chorus, btw, which mutes the Brechtian parallelism even more.

response to Snazzy:

I think Prince and Sondheim's relationship was more complex and organic than that. It's significant that after the partnership broke up over "Merrily We Roll Along" it's Sondheim who kept doing concept pieces ("Sunday in the Park With George," "Assassins," "Into the Woods") while the more prolific Prince's most famed subsequent productions have been relatively straight (i.e., "Phantom," "Kiss of the Spider Woman" the 1994 revival of "Showboat." And as to Brecht, the "It's man devouring man, my dear" stuff is not just in the decor, it's in the lyrics.

response to Calypso: thank you

Sondheim has always said that he's reticent in intitiating works, while interestingly, Sweeney Todd is the one that he brought to the table.

My comments about "concept" musicals had less to do with their inherent value than their success. While the post Prince Sondheim musicals can all be described as concepts, they're only so in relationship to what the material demands.

Prince, with his work after Sondheim was often as a director for hire. The lack of a clear personal stamp, along with middling material didn't serve him well.

Sondheim on the other hand, expanded on his previous musicals and found in new collaborators a way to effectively build on his previous shows.

That Sondheim would incorporate Bond's subtext and Prince's concept is a natural outgrowth of his collaborative spirit. But Todd, as Sondheim wrote it has less to do with Brecht than with folk opera, and the simple desire to scare an audience.

To that end, it seems that Burton and his cast have found the kernal of the real "concept" that so inspired the composer years ago.

Snazzy

Snazzy --

Thoughtful stuff, with which I respectfully disagree. But I do respect the care and attention you and others have given to the issues raised by my little review.

As one of the beautiful things about movies is that every audience response is a uniquely personal one, I hope you all enjoy yourselves immensely when SWEENEY becomes available to you.

That's ultimately what it's all about, and no critic worth anything wants to get in the way of that for any audience member, however he or she may personally feel.

regards - R

Ray,

I appreciate your open attitude, and non-confrontational approach. So many of your colleagues defend against death their opinions to the degree that any questioning posts are considered treason. Your attention to those who visit your site should be a lesson for others.

Thanks!

Snazzy

There's something very pretentious about this review, and the only thing I can think about when I read this gross over-dissection is that the reviewer seems to want to relish in being a rare dissenter... something that will obviously garner them some attention.

It makes me question their honesty and their integrity, as well as their objectivity.

But when one sees that Freddy Vs. Jason is one of the critic's best reviewed films, there's no questioning: The critic doesn't want to give an objective review, they want to be infamous.

Interesting review. I want to start by saying that I adored the Sweeney Todd movie, and the reason I adored it was that Tim Burton, for the most part, stayed out of Stephen Sondheim's way. Sweeney Todd is perhaps the greatest musical of the last 30 years and to see it presented with due justice on the screen is a victory in itself. That being said, if you were to force me to write a bad review of the film I would probably echo most of your article. Burton's illustrative frivolity can sometimes betray his lack of seriousness as a director. His films always have a childish simplicity and Sweeney Todd, with it's over-the-top phlebotomy and melodramatic "stock" characters could have been a mere exercise in Burton's adolescent Guignol obsessions. Gone is the Brechtian epic theatre of Hal Prince's original, it's true. However, by allowing Sondheim's words to stand frond and center the subtle philosophical themes of the show still stand out- though if they were Marxist in 1979 they become positively nihilist here. The lyrics over and over again reinforce these ideas, no where better exemplified than when Sweeney describes the world as "man devouring man, my dear, And who are we to deny it in here?" Whether Burton is aware of these important subtleties is unknown to me; he has an active disengagement with the outside world-his films being hermetically sealed within the borders of his own imagination. Though his expressionistic mise en scene and meta-referential homages (like the Elsa Lanchaster hair) threaten to obscure the seriousness at the core of Sweeney Todd, the director never pushes it too far (at least not for me).

What we get in return is pitch-perfect art direction, a cast to die for (I do very much disagree with you about Depp) and a director who , despite his faults, has a instinctual grasp of the period and the macabre. In that department no one can compare.

Sweeney Todd has always been a tightrope walk in genre and tone: black comedy, tragic drama, social satire, grand opera, salacious melodrama, Gothic horror and oom-pah-pah music hall romp. Sondheim's brilliance is how he deftly juggles all these theatrical genres and never veers of course into too much of one in particular. The effect is seamless. Each new production has the power to emphasize an aspect of this expansive work and, as befits the medium, Burton illuminates the horror and the human drama at the heart of the story, downplaying it's satire and operatic intimations. In the end, Sweeney is about as perfect a film of the classic musical as we could wish for-let's not forget how bad it all could have been! Check out my blog for a retrospective in progress on both Burton and Sondheim.

www.bobofag.blogpot.com

Bobofag et al --

Aside from the obligatory casting-of-aspersions-on-the-reviewer's-motives from Michael B, I am really impressed by the thoughtful timbre of the commentary this piece has inspired. I do want to say that having seen and loved John Doyle's Tony-nominated 2006 reinvention of the work, the Brechtian tendencies of the piece survived (and indeed became more pure) without Prince's elaborate sets and staging.

Have a look:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4iLKi_8pnz8

You also get a whiff of the excised "Ballad of Sweeney Todd" in this medley. Hard to deny the Brechtian flavor of even this small sampling.

While this is an insightful conversation, I have to ask how we can compare all serial murderers to all world wars. the original tale of Sweeney Todd predated the Holocaust by 100 years.

I can see how others might feel that way, yes, and gruesome and as awful as I might sound for saying this, the movie to me was pure entertainment. grim and horrifying as it was, and as many moments as I wanted to shield my eyes, I left the theatre skipping and I've been high ever since I saw it.

and although the ending is grim as can be, everyone essentially gets what they deserve. that at least, speaks some hope in there somewhere.

Just for fun, I have posted a picture of Sweeney Todd revival star Michael Cerveris, Ann K. (I don't give out last names or personal info of non-public people on the internet) and me outside the theatre after a terrific matinee in New York last year:

http://www.zooomr.com/photos/raygreene/sets/26212/

If you click on the shot, it'll give you a bigger version, I believe.

Hmmm, you seem to think I casted an aspersion? I reviewed the reviewer, and came to legitimate conclusions based on this and previous reviews. It's not surprising when a reviewer goes against the critical grain, but when a reviewer does so multiple times, with this level of flagrancy, there's something else going on.
To make an accusation of slander based on that, well, it doesn't really help the case at all, particularly when the review eclipses any other maligning remarks that I have made.
I suspect there will be some deigning remarks about this post. Rest assured that I will not read them. While I have acquired even more information to support my suspicions, the reviewer seems to bruise fairly easily (yet maintains the ability to inflict the harm to an even greater degree). I'd prefer that it didn't escalate past the point of civility, at least not on my part. I'll just let the reviewer's repertoire speak for itself.

I have to say, I have been reading up on this movie and have been anxiously awaiting its opening. I know Brecht's work and can absolutely find similarities with his work and Sweeney. This, however, is the only similarity: it's a social commentary; which anyone can infer without Brecht's methods of STOPPING the action. Obviously that would doom a film, but can work in theater. Brecht's work does NOT translate well to film in my opinion. Were you to take the ballads of Sweeney Todd and put them on screen and by doing so, stopping the story, it would kill a film. Those numbers would stop the action to essentially say what you can already infer.
I guess the reason I'm writing is that I'm confused by your poor rating and do not know if you've considered your readers. To have issues with the film for the reasons you've given, seem picky and trivial. I understand your quibbles with Tim Burton's cinematic obsessions, but from everything else I've read and seen--they are not destroying the story's original ideals.
As a reviewer, you don't just write what YOU like and do not. You write THAT, then you consider your readers and consider certain tastes that would or would not enjoy the film.

I'm also impressed with the quality of comments here; I think that Sondheim fans are generally an intelligent bunch, and we're the ones who have already been scoping Rotten Tomatoes to see how the reviews are looking, then ending up here.

I know SWEENEY backwards and forwards, but haven't seen the film yet. Just a few comments:

Re: "concept musicals," if you're going to use the term you really should stick to works that avoid classic linear plots and traditional dramatic action. I think it's fair to say that COMPANY, FOLLIES, ASSASSINS and PACIFIC OVERTURES are concept musicals, but SWEENEY TODD isn't. (I also wouldn't say that MERRILY or SUNDAY are.) Having a theme -- or something to say -- doesn't make it a "concept musical," it just makes it *better* than most musicals.

Re: Brecht, we can quibble all we want, but no one would say that Prince's production didn't tread in Brechtian waters. Of course it did.

I'm fascinated, tho, to see how the musical plays without "The Ballad of Sweeney Todd." At the opening, it foreshadows a huge amount of the plot, tells us about Sweeney's character, but it seems to set up the idea that SWEENEY TODD is a morality tale.

And, that's the main point I'd like to raise: I really don't believe that SWEENEY TODD has much to say about right vs. wrong, despite a lyric like "freely flows the blood of those who moralize." I don't think it's a morality tale at all, and yet, it's continually referred to as one.

No, it's far bigger than that. For whatever reason, Sondheim put one of his most crucial lyrics -- in "Epiphany" -- on a musical phrase that can easily fly by the listener. "The lives of the wicked should be made brief / For the rest of us, death will be a relief." The entire musical hinges on "Epiphany," and to me, those lyrics are what instantly catapult SWEENEY beyond Brecht. This isn't a musical with political ideas of shouldn'ts and shoulds. This is a straight up Greek tragedy, with heightened emotion and ironic plot twists, and it really shouldn't make us think anything more than, "Wow, that's really, really sad."

I've always had a beef with the final sequence... "isn't that Sweeney there, beside you," and all... it just seems to be trying to find a moral in a story that really doesn't have one. I really wonder if the film will actually play better -- and serve the story better -- without it.

- GrumpyMorningBoy

I have to agree with Micheal. I think the only reason you've given this movie such a harsh review is because you want attention. You want to be the odd one out and so you give bad reviews where credit is obviously due, and vice versa it seems. Freddy vs. Jason being one of your best reviewed films proves it.

Pathetic.

Thanks for replying to one of my questions, Ray, and I see what you're saying about the influence of Brecht in Bond's play, which I'm not familiar with, but I didn't see how the themes of that particular play transferred to Sondheim's musical. I agree that Brecht has had an enormous influence on modern theater but to see this story as strictly a social commentary ignores such an important aspect of the work. Burton chose to focus on the man-into-monster and classical tragedy aspects of the story, and Sondheim seems well satisfied with that approach. It seems to have become more of a personal, intimate story in Burton's hands, a decidely non-Brechtian move.

But I'm still waiting for you to tell me how Sweeney Todd reminds you of Jack Sparrow...

Ray:

Forgive my noting that your writing here is at times just a tad precious... "For a split second, the mask drops, and a reticent Thanatos weeps"-?

But then, perhaps it takes a florid writer to know one -- apologies for leading with the negative. Yours is far and away the most intelligent review I've yet read of this film. While I'd argue that "Sweeney"'s Brechtianisms have never been entirely unproblematic, it's awfully nice to read someone arguing lucidly and intelligently on behalf of their importance to the whole -- especially in the face of current conventional wisdom about the show, which seems to have swung around to the idea that "Sweeney" is best served by ignoring its sociopolitical meanings altogether. Most critics parsed even Doyle's abstract staging, approvingly, as an essentially "intimate" affair, wholly unconcerned with predatory capitalism, much less Darfur. But I've made the case before, myself, for the potency of "Sweeney"'s Holocaust and assembly-line imagery -- and watched it fall on deaf ears, usually met with vague forbearance and the polite suggestion that I might be "overthinking" things. Your levelness in the face of comments like MichaelB's is enviable.

Your final paragraph, to me, does risk bombast -- even while admiring your intellectual self-assuredness (and agreeing with almost all of your points), I do get the faintest glimpse of what others have probably seen in my own impassioned "over"analyses. But your keen perception (and Bobofag's, too) of the several ways in which Burton's sensibility may actually be precisely *wrong* for this material are gratifyingly spot-on. And your understanding of "Sweeney" as a unique and much-needed opportunity for Burton to grow artistically -- a partially, but perhaps not *entirely* missed opportunity, as it seems to have turned out -- is both acute and sensitive. I'd really enjoy chatting with you about both the show and the movie sometime.

But alas, I've yet to see the film, so until the 21st, I'm operating only on the basis of the various clips and photos that have been made available online. Once I've seen the whole thing, I'd very much like to post some impressions and compare reactions with you and some of the others who've commented here. In the meantime, thanks for a stimulating read -- and for making eggheadedness seem like an ever-so-slightly less lonely condition.

Trying to distill all the arguments about "Brechtian" ...

The play was "Brechtian" ergo the movie must be "Brechtian" despite having all the Brecht parts being "muted."

The most "Brechtian" part of the play was the ballad.

Ergo, "Cat Ballou" was far more "Brechtian" than the movie at hand.

Quod erat demonstrandum.

I remain in awe of the intelligence of this forum. Cass, Grumpy and Scenic, I learn from your words.

Also, for Cass: Jack Sparrow without the irony because he's doing something very similar in terms of the region-free British accent but it isn't meant as a joke.

I suppose I should also react to the haters just this once, though I won't make a policy of it (they will, I'm sure, do what they always do, which is simply attack again in essentially the same terms since the attack and not the discussion is what they enjoy).

Since the accusation seems to be that I wrote my review in order to mess up SWEENEY's hundred percent rating on RT, I will respond by explaining that saying such things indicates a complete lack of understanding about how publishing works. My review was finished a week ago (when there were only two published reviews on RT), after which it was edited and posted to the site, arriving day befre yesterday.

There will be a hundred additional reviews on RT by the day the films opens, and I assure you some of them will be from naysayers. It is a coincidence that I am momentarily the one negative in a sea of positives, and I would expect this to change fairly soon. Incidentally, I consider this a "mixed" not a "bad" review.

Since the fact that I really enjoyed FREDDY vs, JASON has come up twice here and once on RT (and, unashamedly and unabashedly, I did and I do enjoy this film -- I know because I watched it again fairly recently and laughed almost as hard), a few points:

First, I hate to disappoint, because I know it's sexier to say I gave the picture five stars, but FREDDY vs. JASON was actually given four (of a possible five) by yours truly -- RottenTomatoes got it wrong when they enetered my rating into their database.

However, you do raise an interesting point in citing my praise of the film as evidence of the untrustworthiness of my SWEENEY piece, one that I think can be fruitfully addressed, because it goes to the heart of the subject of criticism itself.

Are all movies equal, in terms of the audience's expectations for them and what standard of measurement they ask us to hold them up to? Some might say yes -- the compilers of the American Film 100 Best of All Time list for example (but not the compilers of the 100 Best Comedies list).

I would argue no, that each film (or indeed, each art work) sets up its own aesthetic in many ways -- that we judge a Shakespeare comedy differently than we judge a tragedy for example; that the jewel like precision of "As You Like It" is more realized than the less structurally controlled "Hamlet," but that this paradoxically makes it both the more perfect and the lesser play.

For me, "Sweeney Todd" falls short on the terms it sets for itself, which are to be a work of focused artistic achievement and moral seriousness. "Freddy vs. Jason," on the other hand, managed to be exactly (and rather imaginatively) the exact movie the audience I saw it with wanted it to be: irresponsible, blood-soaked and morally reprehensible, or, to be precious and serious and overthought about it, a kind of folk-art cartoon about death's capricousness and cruelty and absolute dominion over human affairs.

Movies are a bastard art form, and sometimes you have to give their low birth origins recognition too. That audience's sheer and audible delight (which I shared) deserves a place of honor at the table of moviegoing responses, and so I decided to give it one when I sat down to write.

Was I right to do so? Decide for yourself if you wish to. Here, for the record, is my original Freddy vs. Jason review:

FREDDY VS. JASON
****

Starring Robert Englund, Monica Kenna and Ken Kirzinger. Directed by Ronny Yu. Written by Damian Shannon and Mark Swift. Produced by Sean S. Cunningham. A New Line release. Horror/Fantasy. Rated R for pervasive strong horror violence/gore, gruesome images, sexuality, drug use and language. Running time: 97 min

If the job of a sequel is to meet and then exceed expectations, "Freddy vs. Jason" is probably the best sequel of the summer. Like the programmers of the ’40s designed to finish off Universal Pictures' "classic horror" phase, "Freddy vs. Jason" pairs up two fading but legendary horror fixtures and then squares them off against each other in the hope that the combined fan bases of each will mean a box office hit. But unlike "Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman" or "House of Dracula," "Freddy vs. Jason" is actually among the best movies in the history of either of the franchises it draws upon. Often knowingly humorous and so unbelievably violent that the mayhem basically answers the question of what a Looney Tunes cartoon would look like if the characters bled, "Freddy vs. Jason" earns every laugh, and works hard for every scream.

Much of the credit goes to a clever script by writers who are smart enough to know that at this point in the long histories of the "Nightmare on Elm Street" and "Friday the 13th" franchises, they are dealing in iconography, and that the essential novelty needed to enliven their work is in getting "Nightmare" villain Freddy Krueger and "Friday" fiend Jason Voorhees believably into each other's company. Their script does just that, then confines all its action to Freddy's Elm Street and Jason's Crystal Lake in the wise belief that one showy central gimmick is enough.

The premise of "Freddy vs. Jason" has a forgotten and extremely weakened Freddy Krueger unable to return to Elm Street from the dark dreamscape he inhabits because none of the children there know he exists ("It's our fear that gives him his power!" explains one of the sitting-duck high school kids early on.) To revive his reputation, Freddy brings Jason Voorhees, the immortal and mute serial killer of Crystal Lake, back from the grave, and sets him loose against the youth of Elm Street. When teens start dying in ridiculously graphic ways, the Elm Street authorities believe Freddy's back in town. As fear of him spreads, Freddy regains his ability to kill the sleeping children of Elm Street. His one remaining problem: Jason, like the sorcerer's apprentice, can be activated, but he can't be turned off, and the two greatest icons of the '80s slasher genre are soon angrily competing for the same limited pool of Elm Street victims.

The movie proceeding from that idea is about as over-the-top as any gore film ever made, and culminates in two lengthy battles between the title villains (one in Freddy's dream world, the other on Jason's home turf at Crystal Lake) that are as well-staged as any fight scenes released in an American movie so far this year.

Under the able direction of legendary Hong Kong action filmmaker Ronny Yu ("The Bride With White Hair"), "Freddy vs. Jason" is a feast for hardcore fans of either character, and likely to bring a new generation of gorehounds into the fold. Think of the film as taking one of those old horror movie double-bills of yore and blending it together into a single 97-minute presentation, with every act of mayhem intact. Can "Abbott and Costello Meet Hellraiser" be far behind?-Ray Greene

-----------------------------------------------

i cant wait for this movie !!! i adore johnny depp and tim burton and his movie !!! i think johnny depp and tim burton and their movie are best in hollywood .....

i love johnny depp and tim burton and their movie. they are best in hollywood !!! i cant wait for this movie !!!

Wow. This forum is exceedingly insightful; if occasionally snarky when it need not be. Just a few thoughts:

Ray- I don't think you could really qualify the John Doyle revival as Brechtian for the primary reason that it avoids social engagement at every turn. Brecht's epic theatre, the kind Prince imitates, is more than just a schematic for distancing effects. These techniques must serve the intellectual engagement of the viewer in rethinking the social order. Brecht was, of course, a Marxist and his plays and his style were used a rallying cry for the exploited proletariat. Brecht's alienation without the social dimension is at best a half-measure; a pretentious parlor trick too often used for little more than directorial masturbation. The John Doyle revival is divorced from all social reality, existing in no time and place. It is a totally different beast. More akin to Artaud's Theatre of Cruelty or Polish Theatrical Theoretician Jerzy Grotowski's "poor theatre," the purpose of the Doyle production was powerfully experiential and uniquely theatrical; a dazzling minimalist assault that deconstructed the entire psychological apparatus of the show and fastened it anew. The focus of Sweeney Todd became an examination of disturbing inward psychological states; a fever dream set in a Weimar Cabaret amidst a dense Freudian fog. The revival ignored the outward influences of social oppression and industrial tyranny that framed the original production. I adored the revival and though I don't think it surpassed the original, it was a wholly inventive take on the material that only further illuminated the elasticity of Sondheim's brilliance. But Brechtian it's not.

2. Along the same lines, the film's lack of social criticism had an interesting effect in terms of how the plot registers for a virgin viewer. A friend of mine who had not seen Sweeney before but watched the movie said that (and spoilers here if you don't know Sweeney) they knew that the beggar woman was Lucy from her first entrance. This might be due to the intimacy of the camera or the subtle cuts in her material but I think it's actually something more interesting. With Prince's production the Beggar Woman could be seen as a manifestation of the squalor and poverty in industrial England. Seen as a form of social criticism the Beggar Woman is not an awkward feature of the plot that the audience expects an explanation for, ergo, without this element the Beggar Woman is more easily identified for watch she is. I think Burton knew this and that's why the "big reveal " of her identity is underplayed in the movie, the fanfare usually accompanying Sweeney's terrible realization totally absent. Burton suspected, I think, that the realization was going to be Sweeney's alone, the audience having figured it out long before.

www.bobofag.blogspot.com

Excellent stuff my man! Of course there's always a lot of back and forth in any discussion of Brecht or Brechtianism (which are not always the same thing I think). For what it's worth --

I admire your point and you make it persuasively, and I am not going to say you're wrong. For me, from my little existential pool, I can't agree that the show can ever be entirely un-Brechtian and socially disengaged -- even Burton's isn't, though it comes as close as possible. Let me show you what I mean, citing Sondheim's contribution alone:

Sweeney described: "Quick and quiet and clean he was/Like a perfect machine he was"...

The forces of history described: "The history of the world my sweet/is who gets eaten and who gets to eat/How gratifying for once to know/That those above will serve those down below..."

The world's organizing principle revealed: "For what's the sound of the wolrd out there?/Those crunching noises pervading the air?/It's man devouring man, my dear/And who are we to deny it in here?"...

In other words, all these and many other very Brechtian lines the great German artist would have been proud of are built in, irrevocably. And the Judge and Beadle will always represent upper class vampires dining on the lower classes.

But I also think Doyle is more Brechtian than the very Brechtian Prince, and that you're perhaps focusing on the affect of the epic theatre approach and not its intention. Doyle mounted his show in changed conditions from both Brecht's and Prince's, and had to react differently to keep the show relevant.

When Brecht and Piscator put revolves and projectors and trap doors and other mechanisms into their productions, no one was doing it, and so it magnified the social subtexts because it amplified messages in a new key and volume. Now everyone does it -- helicopters land, giant muppets appear over the horizon line and shake their heads, the whole cast climbs onto a dirigible and flies away just before the curtain drops. The Broadway "Lion King" has more traditional epic effects than a full season of the Berliner Ensemble could ever have deployed, and it's all about selling you a plush toy.

What Brecht really wanted to do was to challenge the audience's notions of character identification so that they would contemplate the meaning of the work and their relation to it intellectually rather than emotionally. By pairing back all the showbiz technology audiences have come to expect -- make that demand -- of the musical, Doyle let the actual play and its powerful and disturbing comment on human cruelty speak more loudly, and the cognitive disonance of the fact that we are simultaneously appalled by and fascinated with SWEENEY came through with more force.

Also: having the characters play all the instruments right there onstage is a coninuous alienation (I prefer "estrangement") effect of a useful and economical type. For what can remind the audience of the artificiality of what they're watching -- of its "show-ness" -- better than that? And how disruptive is that to our natural tendency to identify with the leads of anythign we watch? Sweeney may have just killed a man, but he's going to sit down and play the guitar rather sweetly for the lovers right afterward. Again, it drops us out of the show just enough to contemplate the characters and issues more completely. It's basically a Mahagonny-Songspiel approach to a larger work, and in some ways the show is a better one in that environment, at least for me.

Hell, the Doyle production's art direction and staging almost seems literally taken from the original "Three Penny Opera" stills... not that that necessarily would create an estrangement effect, but it shows what model they wanted to emulate. And unlike Prince's show (and every show since "Phantom" dropped a chandelier on the crowd), nobody in Doyle's audience could accidentally come out of the room humming the scenery and stage machinery. They had to go with the content, and the bracketing prologue and epilogue Doyle left intact.

I want to make one more comment which is a response to the notion that Doyle's relative placelessness disqualifies him from being labelled Brechtian. I think this is actually a hallmark of Brecht's work, which was made for a German audience in the era before jet travel. He sets "Man Equals Man" in colonialist India, or "Good Woman of Szechuan" in China, or "Jungle of the Cities" in Chicago -- all places he's never been to and none of which he observes with even a slight nod to documentary realism -- precisely because he knows his audience can't identify with the locale, and will be that much more likely to view the drama as an issues-driven fable. Where exactly does "The Yes Sayer" or "The No Sayer" take place? How realized are these palces as environments? Doyle's work stands in that tradition -- of the impulse toward simplifaction shown in the Lehrstücke -- as it does in the epic one.

I don't expect to persuade anyone, but at least you can see why I feel how I feel.

Having been in the original play of Sweeney, I have to say that that Brechtian overtones were competely lost on me as they seem to have been on Chris Bond, who has successfully directed revivals of the musical on at least three occasions - sans Brecht.

The original play was knocked up in about a week with heavy borrowings from Shakespeare and the Jacobean revenge tragedies - those are its real antecedents, something Prince avoided, , willfully and mistakenly, in his original production. In the original musical production there was a difference of opinion about what the show was about - Prince was convinced it was about industrialization - Sondheim said it was about obsession. The two themes may not have been naturally exclusive but, here, in the UK, at least the first one didn't wash much, as historically it doesn't make a great deal of sense, and the show tends to be presented as Sondheim originally intended it, as a chamber thriller.

So I rest happy that Tim Burton's version has gone down the right road as far as that's concerned.

Again, thanks for answering my question, Ray, but please allow me to quibble about it. The statement I was questioning was "His Sweeney is Jack Sparrow without the irony." You presented no context for this comment other than his acting, which you found disappointing and one-dimensional. So what the reader would take from that is the idea that he is somehow reprising his role as Jack Sparrow here, only not as well or appropriately. Now that you've clarified that to me, I understand what you're saying but it's a shame that you didn't say that in your review. If it wasn't intentional, you must admit it's at least sloppy.

By the way, I've been participating in some discussions about what Sweeney SHOULD sound like, and why the stage Sweeney's had American accents rather than cockney or any sort of British accent. I'd like to hear what you think would have been an appropriate accent for the character, given the fact that the film is obviously more naturalistic than any of the stage versions I know of. Sweeney grew up in a lower-class London neighborhood, and then spent 15 years away from home. What would you say a more appropriate accent would have been?

Cass: regarding accents; in the UK, Sweeney is usually sung with a London accent or at least RP. Denis Quilley,probably the best Sweeney there has ever been and the Sweeney that Tim Burton saw at the Theatre Royal, used a London accent.

Using an American accent as Cariou and Hearn did was always a bit strange (but not as strange as Patti Lupone's or indeed Angela Lansbury's at points, although admittedly Lupone got better with John Doyle) and I understand it only happened because Cariou didn't think he could pull a London accent off - if anything at times he sounded Irish as did Hearn.

Yes, Sweeney's accent as produced is often a wayward one -- that's what happens I suppose when an American team creates a London-based piece. But textually the character's a denizen of East London, and a point of the piece is that he's powerless in the face of the upper class attack by the judge and beadle, which puts him lower on the food chain than they are.

He's a cockney.

Incidentally, that's how Lansbury played Mrs. Lovett isn't it?

As to the person who claimed Chistopher Bond's play had nothing to do with Brecht, at the risk of being tiresome, here again is Bond's presumably self-authored but certainly vetted bio in the 2006 SWEENEY TODD revival's Broadway program:

[Begin Bond's program bio;]
CHRISTOPHER BOND (Adaptor), an actor/director/writer, wrote Sweeney Todd for the Stoke-on-Trent experimental Theatre. He took Brecht's Man Is Man, renamed it Man Eats Man and applied it to the public domain one-act folk play of Sweeney Todd by George Dibdin Pitt who stole the story from a short story "The String of Pearls: A Romance" in the Victorian gossip magazine Penny Dreadful. [stop program bio]

Whatever the production you participated in may have chosen to emphasize about Bond's text, again and according to Bond -- not me -- Brecht is not just an influence, he is a source.

Incidentally, the term "Sweeney Todd" is apparently cockney rhyming slang for the London Police department's "Flying Squad," so the old boy has been honored suitably in his home region.

As an actor who has played Sweeney on stage, my first thought upon hearing of Depp's casting was "Oh, no!" Then I heard Burton was directing and again thought, "Oh, this is so wrong." Mr. Greene's review only stands to confirm all my fears about this film. Of course, I'll be seeing it and will form my own opinion, but I am skeptical.

Hey guys -- check this out! Stephen Sondheim personally denying the Brechtina influence rather forcibly:

http://journal.nonesuch.com/journal/2007/12/video-sondheim.html

How cool is that?

Rather than ignite the same debate twice, I would refer you to my original entry into this discussion board (it is the third listing from the top).

But this was just too good to pass up!

Oh hell - I misquoted SWEENEY from memory in one of my posts above, although the point (Sondheim describing Sweeney as a machine) is unchanged. In THE BALLAD OF SWEENEY TODD, Sondheim actually wrote:

"Inconspicuous Sweeney was/Quick and quiet and clean he was"

Then ELSEWHERE in the same song said:

"Sweeney pondered, and Sweeney planned/like a perfect machine, he planned."

I hate when that happens, and am barely solaced by the fact that I caught it myself. My apologies.

"But textually the character's a denizen of East London"

He lives on Fleet Stret - which is not in the East End but is the street that runs up to St Pauls all of which is in the City of London (the East End lies to the east of the City) and a prosperous area home to the Inns of Court, umpteen churches and the newspaper and book publishing trade.

"and a point of the piece is that he's powerless in the face of the upper class attack by the judge and beadle, which puts him lower on the food chain than they are."

The point of the piece is that he becomes obsessed with the idea of avenging the wrongdoing perpetrated by the Judge.....

Chris Bond:

"The people in Sweeney are fuelled by basic and simple human emotions: greed, lust, vengeance, and a desire to love and be loved in return. They inhabit a corrupt, unjust and dangerous world, but this should tend to intensify their humanity rather than destroy it. To overemphasise the elements of the show encapsulated most clearly in the lines:

"Th engine roared, the motor hissed,
And who would know how the road would twist..."

is in some ways to deny the audience's total involvement with the people and events in the story, and is ultimately too Brechtian approach for me. If the people are dehumanised for any reason we cease to care about them."*

As for the antecedents of Sweeney, if indeed they are Brechtian and I don't think you can pin so much on so little in a bio, they are more vividly, as has been pointed out, , "Dumas' The Count of Monte Cristo [crossed with] Tourneur's The Revenger's Tragedy for a plot; added [with] elements of pastiche of Shakespeare in blankish sort of verse for Sweeney, the Judge and the lovers to talk; [I] borrowed the name of the author of The Prisoner of Zenda..."*

Granted, Chris was a Marxist at the time of writing the play and might see more than a little of the class struggle in the play, not unknown in Britain at that time - his subsequent direction of the musical have been far from Brecht and very close to the blood and guts humanity that he has also described.

*Chris Bond: Introduction to the printed libretto of

I used to watch a show called "The Sweeney" - it was a cop show about the flying squad.

Without recanting anything I've posted (except perhaps that Fleet Street is in the East End -- although I looked it up before I said it, i'm going to assume a Brit knows better than I or Google do) I'm going to actually agree with a lot of what Anonymous just said -- I've had the sinking feeling that "Brechtian" is too protean a term for a precise discussion about SWEENEY, since in a dialogue the fact that every person seems to find a different emphasis to place when they use it makes for a lot of hairsplitting of the "angels on the head of a pin" variety.

I will add that to say something is "Brechtian" is not to say it's by Brecht -- SWEENEY definitely wants to engross you as a viewer in ways Brecht would have reviled (although Brecht often does the same thing -- I don't see how anybody can watch even a severe production of MOTHER COURAGE without feeling empathy as well as frustration at the woman's actions and suffering). I suspect he would have liked a lot of it, but that he would have also been offended in the way he was when he referred to the Shakespeare of HAMLET as "the poet of barbarians."

But a point of intersection between Bertolt and SWEENEY is in the latter's leftist critque of the class structure -- or is it? I'll make the case "for:"

- Sweeney is victimized by those above him on the social ladder

- The predator is a judge, and therefore not just a symbol of class injustice but of the state, which is shown to be corrupt

- After he goes fully mad, Sweeney takes up arms against the entire society -- the social order -- not just the people who have wronged him

- Most importantly, the central subplot of the play is that a failing petty bourgeois business becomes successful and highly profitable by adding murder to its list of ingredients (echoing the Marxist critique that capitalism is a form of organized violence) AND

- SWEENEY TODD depicts consumerism as the literal consumption of one man by another (the meat pies, like Soylent Green, are people). The product's sucess on the open market is an ironic socil comment

From Godard (Weekend) to George Romero (Dan of the Dead) to Paul Bartel (Eating Raoul), satirical filmmakers have used cannibalsim as a metaphor for the horrors of capitalism. This same critique appears irrevocably embedded in SWEENEY TODD no matter whether Prince, Doyle or even Tim Burton directs, though some are able to utilize it more effectively than others.

Or so this all appears to me -- so you decide.

As one of the people who questioned the influence of "A Man's A Man" on Sweeney Todd, I made clear in my post that I wasn't familiar with Bond's play and I have no reason not to believe his own words about what inspired or influenced his play. But Sondheim's Sweeney, I repeat, has very little to do with the Brecht play except in the most general terms. "Man's inhumanity to Man, society turning a mild-mannered man into a killer" yes, those themes are touched on, but so is the personal tragedy of the story; the real theme, the heart of the play, is that vengeance (not society) is what really doomed Sweeney. Just look at the ending; it was his single-minded need to exact his revenge on the Judge that blinded him to the fact that he was destroying innocent people, including the real victims of the tragedy to begin with. Burton's Sweeney is twice-removed from Bond's play, and he made the artistic choice to focus on the personal for his version. You can disagree with that decision, but it should be judged on its own, not as a failed attempt to bring Brecht/Bond's vision to film. Just as you judged Alien Vs Predator for what it was, you should be willing to do the same for Burton's movie.

I still don't think you justified your criticism of Sweeney's accent, and I can't help but think that was nothing more than an attempt to deliver a clever-sounding dig at Depp, for reasons I won't even try to guess. Just like your opening speculation about how Sondheim missed his opportunity to work with masters of the musical genre such as Donen, Minnelli and Berkeley, implying they could have all done a better job with Sweeney than Burton did. I won't even ask how exactly you might imagine any of them attempting a project like this. I no longer take the kind of recreational drugs needed to envision Berkeley's Sweeney!

Sorry about the typos -- "Dan of the Dead" (Sean's cousin I assume) is of course supposed to be "Dawn of the Dead" (sheesh!)

Cass, with all due respect, I answered your query about the comment I made on the accent graciously I think. I don't mind you disagreeing with me (in fact I encourage it) but imputing bad faith to me as a writer not once but three times -- it's beginning to get tiresome, especially after I already responded to your question.

As far as Sondheim and Berkeley -- I never advocated that Berkeley would have been a good director for SWEENEY, you will note if you reread that passage that I was talking about Sondheim's career in toto -- his entire body of work and how ill-served it's been by the movies -- when I made those remarks.

In point of fact, I can imagine a great Berkeley version of FOLLIES for example -- it's a pairing I think could have worked quite well. As would a Minelli version of NIGHT MUSIC, and a Cukor version of COMPANY, and a Stanley Donen version of almost anything other than PACIFIC OVERTURES -- at least in principle all of these could have been great great great.

The Donen who made BEDAZZLED and TWO FOR THE ROAD as well as SINGIN' IN THE RAIN? Probably the best match possible for the similarly diverse and eclectic Sondheim oeuvre.

In any case, I still want to leave Brecht to one side for the moment as I think he's been discussed enough (and is a very small percentage of my actual critique of the film btw) and ask for comments on the Marxist (or at least leftist) elements embedded in SWEENEY, as brought up by Anonymous awhile back. Any takers?

With all due respect, I kept bringing it the same point because you didn't really answer it. You can choose not to respond to me anymore, but I just want to reiterate it one last time, so that maybe in the future you'll be more careful when writing your reviews. In the context it was written, you made it sound like Depp was simply rehashing a previous role. You did not even mention the word "accent" till I asked you to clarify it. It would be nice if you would admit that was a poorly worded and misleading remark.

Along the same lines, you brought up Minnelli, Donen and Berkeley not as potential Sweeney directors, true, but strongly suggested that they would have been capable of understanding and bringing Sondheim to film in a way Burton could not. Since the review is about Sweeney Todd, that begs the question of why you brought them up in the first place. For the record, "Two For the Road" is one of my all-time favorite movies, and "Bedazzled" was hysterical. I don't share the love that everybody else does for "Singin' In The Rain," but it's a fine musical for what it is. Was that list of movies meant to convince me that Donen was as versatile as Sondheim? No argument there! Were his sensibilities compatible with Sondheim's? Well, that's subject to debate. Berkeley was the most facetious mention there, and I have to admit that I have a guilty fondness of his musicals. But appropriate for Sondheim? That was just--bizarre.

Anyway, regardless of your opinion, Sondheim chose Burton as much as Burton chose Sweeney, and between the two of you, I think I'm going to trust Sondheim on this.

I stand by the comment about the accent, and grieve for the deterioration in the tone of your posts over the course of this conversation. I don't understand why anyone should wish to make character judgements of this sort toward someone they don't know and who is treating them with patience and cordiality.

I'd like to be accomodating, especially as you seem to want me to agree with you about the nefariousness of my motives with an almost Sweeney-like monomania. Unfortunately, I was sincere when I said it. There's the rub.

To repeat myself in words you may recognize as a more direct response to your charge of insincerity and bad faith, my motive was: I said it because it was pertinent, and because I meant it.

I'm glad you admit that I never pitched Berkeley as a SWEENEY director though. If you don't see why I might like him for FOLLIES, perhaps you don't know the Sondheim musical or the general contours of Berkeley's career?

The Sondheim show takes place in the ruins of the exact kind of theatre Berkeley began his (Broadway) career in, and that his backstage musicals at Warner celebrated with such chipper naievete. Berkeley choreographed more than two dozen of the kind of Broadway reveus FOLLIES is trying to mourn, comment on and resurrect. Berkeley also owed his career to Florence Ziegfeld's decision to ask him to choreograph the Broadway show "A Connecticut Yankee" and the Eddie Cantor review "Whoopee!," later the cause of Berkeley's relocation to Hollywood, when he remained with the material as its dance director.

A lot of what we take to be the "Berkeley" touch ascends in a direct line from Ziegfeld's shows -- the most famous of which were his "Follies."

And: The main character of FOLLIES -- or at least the show's catalyst -- is a fictionalization of Florence Ziegfeld. In addition to his autobiographical connection to the material, Berkeley could have choreographed the big, old-fashioned chorus numbers in his sleep.

Seems to me Busby might have done a pretty good job with that one. At the very least it would have been fascinating to see what he came up with.

One more time for the radicals out there: Is SWEENEY leftist?

The brief for:

- Sweeney is victimized by those above him on the social ladder

- The predator is a judge, and therefore not just a symbol of class injustice but of the state, which is shown to be corrupt

- After he goes fully mad, Sweeney takes up arms against the entire society -- the social order -- not just the people who have wronged him

- Most importantly, the central subplot of the play is that a failing petty bourgeois business becomes successful and highly profitable by adding murder to its list of ingredients (echoing the Marxist critique that capitalism is a form of organized violence) AND

- SWEENEY TODD depicts consumerism as the literal consumption of one man by another (the meat pies, like Soylent Green, are people). The product's sucess on the open market is an ironic socil comment

From Godard (Weekend) to George Romero (Dawn of the Dead) to Paul Bartel (Eating Raoul), satirical filmmakers have used cannibalsim as a metaphor for the horrors of capitalism. This same critique appears irrevocably embedded in SWEENEY TODD no matter whether Prince, Doyle or even Tim Burton directs, though some are able to utilize it more effectively than others.

Or so this all appears to me -- so you decide.

[There may be some spoilers here]

The Marxist or leftist story that you outline might be there – was it the authors’ intention? Not really.

Bond describes the show as Aspects of Love and Sondheim has said more or less the same thing: Sweeney loves his wife and daughter, it’s a love that keeps him going in his exile and when he discovers their fate, it is the catalyst for his need for vengeance; Mrs Lovett loves Sweeney and money; Judge Turpin and Anthony love Johanna in their different ways – the Judge previously lusted; Johanna is seeking love and finds it in the first young man she sees, Anthony; Tobias has never been shown love and wants it above all.

“Sweeney is victimized by those above him on the social ladder� – is true up to a point, but the Judge lusts after Lucy and uses his position to get Sweeney, or Benjamin Barker as was, out the way. It’s a stock situation something that Dickens could have come up with – but the impetus for the situation comes from the Judge’s libido not his rank.

“The predator is a judge, and therefore not just a symbol of class injustice but of the state, which is shown to be corrupt� – well that’s an extrapolation and lumps a lot on the shoulders of the Judge. The Judge is obviously able to get away with a lot based on the power that he wields in his local area, rather like the stock baddies in a Western, which may have more to do with living, in this case, in an anarchic city, red in tooth and claw with few checks and balances. Again Dickens and others would be comfortable with this as a situation.

“After he goes fully mad, Sweeney takes up arms against the entire society -- the social order -- not just the people who have wronged him� – madness with Sweeney is a relative term. He’s pretty near the edge on his return to London. He has a horror of London from the start - “There’s a hole in the world/ like a great black pit/and the vermin of the world/inhabit it�……it’s a hatred expressed at the very beginning and unleashed, later, in his Epiphany, after the escape of the Judge. The point is he is mad by this time, he can’t get the Judge but he’ll settle for others in the meantime, he’ll assuage his guilt in being unable to avenge his wife and daughter by shuffling his fellow-sufferers off their mortal coil and giving them “relief� from the “great black pit�…… “we all deserve to die�. This isn’t a declaration of war against the social order this is nihilism born of a messianic desperation.

“Most importantly, the central subplot of the play is that a failing petty bourgeois business becomes successful and highly profitable by adding murder to its list of ingredients (echoing the Marxist critique that capitalism is a form of organized violence)� – Sweeney’s obsessive revenge has spilled over into serial killing and the amoral Mrs Lovett sees a way in which she can both be enriched and keep Sweeney close to her . Obviously, Marxist and the left-leaning may, and probably will, interpret capitalism as organised crime but there are probably more valid views. Cannibalism is embedded in the story of Sweeney because it’s been the central part of the story since the beginning, it’s the great taboo; it’s an atavistic horror stretching back to the Gilgamesh, Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus, Swaney Beane and, perhaps importantly, given Sweeney’s messianic need for “salvation�, in the Catholic Church’s communion ritual - and would appear to have little to do with capitalism or consumerism.

Whilst I don’t deny that one could look at this as a Marxist critique – as my old history master would say, “there is a Marxist interpretation for the weather forecast� – I don’t think there is anything exclusively Marxist or leftist. I would tend to go with the authors’ intentions, which are pretty well-known, this is a horror story or thriller.

Thank you for taking the "leftist" query so seriously -- you write beautifully and thoughtfully.

For what it's worth, and softly, gentlely... I do think you go a bit out of your way to dismiss Marxist parallels within SWEENEY that are far more integral than the weather forecast would be, and also that several of your arguments (such as the one about Dickens, of whom Orwell wrote "the Marxist claims him as ‘almost’ a Marxist") you create either/or dichotomies where none exist (surely SWEENEY can remind us of Dickens and Marx simultaneously? Given the fact that for all their differences, the focus on class is laser-like in each?). And surely just because the original source contains elements that would work in a Marxist interpretation doesn't disqualify them from being used in one... that would be like saying that when Brecht ended his days doing an adaptation on CORIALANUS he didn't choose the work to explore politics because politics was already explored by Shakespeare in the original...

Still, I can think of nothing more tiresome then me soliciting a reaction, receiving a fine and thoughtful one, and then going to any great lengths to refute it point by point -- these are opinions, after all, not facts, and that makes the world wide enough to house us both. What I'd like to ask instead is: Who are you? As you've intimated an affiliation with the work and demonstrated an extremely deep knowledge and specialized understanding of it, I would be honored to know with whom I'm corresponding. cheers - R

Because it seemed germane, Harold Prince on SWEENEY:

Harold Prince: It's very possible I imposed something on it. No one else who has done it since has ever done that. I wanted it to have some social significance, and I realized the story takes place during the beginning of the Industrial Age in England, and that all of these people -- obviously, it turns to cannibalism -- some of them don't even know that they're inadvertently cannibals, but basically, I thought they are all sharing one thing. They never breathe clean air. They never see sunlight. From the day they're born to the day they die, they're victims. So I said to Eugene Lee, "Let's do it in a factory, and let's put a glass roof on it that makes it claustrophobic, and let's tell all of these people that they are in the same spot really as the two leading characters in the play, that they're all victims of the industrial age." This is a time when kids were on the assembly line for 14 hours a day doing piecework and so on, and that pulled the whole show together for me. Oddly enough, it has never been done (that way) since. There certainly are detractors who think, "Why did he bother?" but I bothered because it made it possible for me to direct it, and I did a good job.

"In the meantime I'll practice on less honorable throats" is the precise point in the show at which, for me, the idea of entirely overlooking a strong element of sharp social criticism becomes untenable. Without acknowledging that there's more to Sweeney's martyrdom than a single, rather sketchily-drawn villain, Sweeney's abrupt upgrade from vengeful victim to indiscriminate serial killer becomes nonsensical and, frankly, ridiculous, forcing us to fall back on a rather lazy and unsatisfying "insanity defense" -- to wit, "don't question it too closely, he's just crazy".

Indeed he is, but if we're going to write off Sweeney's motive for the decision that carries him through the remaining *half of the show* as mere lunatic capriciousness -- "I can't capture my foe, and it's got me so hopping mad that I think I'll just kill a bunch of other random strangers instead" -- then we're essentially saying Sondheim/Wheeler's version of the story is no more genuinely interested in character or psychology than the penny-dreadfuls on which it's based. To those of us who take Sondheim's work at all seriously, this obviously won't do, but once you've played the insanity card (i.e., used madness as a blanket explanation for Sweeney's actions), there's really no way around it.

I also wanted to register my agreement with Ray's suggestion that, notwithstanding the opposition that's been formulated between "political" and "emotional" interpretations, there's no reason they can't coexist. Setting aside the alienation effect -- which I won't even go into, since I think it's an overwhelmingly more complicated and confounding subject than is almost ever acknowledged -- it's really not an either/or situation. It's far too often assumed that Sweeney's social context is necessarily some kind of academic (read boring) distraction from the juicier subject of its characters' feelings -- but I have no more interest than the next "Sweeney" fan in seeing the show turned into a dry civics lecture (as if that were possible!), as I daresay Ray doesn't either. My point is that acknowledgement of the broader context needn't come at the *expense* of character, story or atmosphere -- indeed, it really only stands to enhance all three.

If "practice," as Sweeney facetiously calls it, makes a resoundingly UNpersuasive serial-killer origin story, he has nevertheless already told us all we need to know in the blistering catechism of the "we all deserve to die" sequence. According to him, the world sorts out cleanly into the Haves -- ALL of whom abuse their status, and must be punished -- and the Have-Nots, whose ONLY "salvation" is to be put out of their misery. It's a crude worldview, no doubt about it, but in a world as flat-out bestial as that described by Prince, Sweeney isn't so much a despairing nihilist (or at least, not *only* that) as he is simply a dismayingly clear-eyed observer of factual reality.

A few minutes later, his delight with Mrs. Lovett's "bright idea" has far less to do with considerations of mere utility (how to dispose of Pirelli? the tone of Sweeney's reaction tells us he doesn't much care) than with its delicious "appropriate"ness.

Skirt the words "capitalism" and "Marxism" if you must, but "Epiphany" and "Priest" together boil down to mere bombast and cleverness, respectively, if we refuse to recognize in them *some* kind of comment on power and justice in a world where the former is invariably corrupt and the latter nonexistent. Which sounds a hell of a lot like social criticism to me.

The faux-French of the article and passive-aggressive pretentiousness of these comment threads made for an entertaining afternoon read; thank you, internet denizens.

Fluent in French: La langue française est le langauge de l'amour ainsi pourquoi soyez un "hater ?"

Scenic: "I also wanted to register my agreement with Ray's suggestion that, notwithstanding the opposition that's been formulated between "political" and "emotional" interpretations, there's no reason they can't coexist. "

EXACTLY! They enrich one another -- more food at the banquet!

Also, if Sweeney is meant as a static madman, why call the song where he elects to war on humanity "Epiphany"? An epiphany is a transformative moment of realization. It's a big word for some tectonic shift inside the self...

Another quote from "Epiphany" that deserves mention in any discussion of SWEENEY based in ideas of class and radical expression:

Because in all of the whole human race, Mrs. Lovett
there are two kinds of men and only two.
There's the one staying put in his proper place
and the one with his foot in the other one's face-
Look at me Mrs. Lovett, look at you!

At the risk of trotting out the dreaded "B" word, Sweeney's madness could be viewed as serving as theironic distancing device when he says things like that. What's CAUSED his madness? The intellectual conclusions his broken mind is coming to suggest Karl Marx might find it easy to give it a name...

I just walked out midway through an Academy screening in West Hollywood. I don't get it. Is this what people really want to watch? I found it quite leaden, actually. All I could think was, "Who cares?"

Burton is the most overrated director in Hollywood; he hasn't made a good film since Pee-Wee's Big Adventure. Brilliant production design alone can't carry a movie, and this has been his problem for over twenty years.

Ray's prose might be a little purple, but he is right about this movie.

And no, I'm not trying to be contrary -- I just want to speak up for the minority!

I consider my prose mauve actually.

Interestingly, another friend of mine -- a critic I respect who was not reviewing the film -- had the same crisis of belief about Burton's talent while watching this one. The uniformity of the praise is a bit like mass hypnosis -- or actually, I suspect most film critics are encountering SONDHIEM'S contribution for the first time and are blown away by it -- as well they might be.

For what it's worth I'm not a Burton or Depp hater: I was a big (possibly the only) critical fan of BATMAN RETURNS; I named EDWARD SCISSORHANDS as my favorite film of the 1990s for REEL.COM (meaning the one I enjoyed most rather than the best -- I don't do "bests"); and I was so inspired by ED WOOD that I used my film column in L.A. VIEW to write an open letter to Johnny Grant of the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce asking him to honor all the misfits who have come to Hollywood and led unfullfilled lives of film-crazed sorrow and grace by covering over the lettering on the Hollywood Sign so it would read "EDDIE WOOD" for a day.

I heard from a second party at Disney that Burton loved that piece (which may or may not be true); I know his screenwriters did because they told me so personally.

For the heck of it, here's the piece I wrote for REEL.COM on Scissorhands:

http://reel.com/reel.asp?node=features/millennium/bestof90s/edwardscissorhands

Oh, and I resisted using the very snappy phrase EDWARD RAZORHANDS in the piece that started this conversation as a way of describing the Burton SWEENEY out of respect for the older work. But it was a really hard term to resist.

Now, as a tremendous fan of the '06 bway production and full of regret at having missed the '79 production, I'm approaching the movie with the same mix of anticipation and dread as I had when 'Fellowship of the Ring' trailers were playing.

I'm not sure whether any of the terrific (and not so) previous comments have touched on this, and maybe it goes without saying if you're thoughtful about the difference between theatre and film, but (and it just might be that Depp, Carter, Cohen are all gonna be brilliant, and I know that without "names", there's no movie, but (long build up to simple point)), a celebrity-loaded, mega H'wood, $50M-advertising-budget (made number up) MOVIE is such a different form from a staged production, musical or otherwise (at least if it's not Disney on Broadway), that comparisons hardly signify.

BTW, IMHO the politics of Sweeney Todd (with which I completely identify), are the weakest, and most awkwardly presented, part of the story.

Finally, I sure did prefer Cariou's non-brit presentation to Cerveris's (sp?) attempts (Cerveris isn't British, is he?).

Thanks for all the fun reading.

If by, "extraordinary," everyone means, "shrill and horrifying" then, yes, Helena Bonham Carter indeed excels. She may look the part but she does nothing with it. I agree with this pompously verbose (forgive the redundancy) reviewer's dismissal of a sleep walking Depp but am shocked that he could stand her voice long enough to enjoy Carter. For an actress who is usually so versatile and witty, she is one note and that note is frankly ghastly. The worst sin of all is that neither of them look like they're having any fun which is essential for these rolls. At least on stage. But just because they are subtly cinematic ghouls it doesn't mean they can't enjoy themselves at least a little. Perhaps I'm biased toward Angela Lansbury's sadistic-kewpie doll of doom, but at least she had the chops to make this very meaty source into a plum pie. All I can say is that Marla Singer shouldn't do the latter ever again.

Ray, I'm sorry if the deteriorating level of my discourse is disappointing you. It's frustrating for me because you seem like an intelligent and well-read guy, but I found certain omissions and blind-spots (in my humble opinion, of course) in your review to worth pointing out, and your answers to be interesting but dismissive. The gist of my complaint is that you are judging the movie against your own vision of what the movie should have been, which is fine, but not very useful for people who don't need as much socio-political content with their tragic/horror/black comedy/musical as you apparently do. While it's interesting to get your take on what you wanted to see, a good reviewer should also be able to judge a movie by what it is trying to accomplish on its own terms. Burton, Logan and Sondheim have made it very clear what they were going for. I agree with the poster who said that socio-political and emotional themes aren't mutually exclusive, but neither are they always required, nor do they need to be equally emphasized. The social context you lament is not as central to Sondheim's Sweeney Todd as you would like (based on his own words), and is conveyed largely through the lyrics, and in Burton's hands its presence is conveyed visually, with a dirty, tawdry, monochromatic London standing in as a silent reminder of the horrors and injustices of the Industrial Age. But over and over again, the principals have stated that this version of Sweeney focuses on Sweeney's personal tragedy. Think of the classic Greek tragedies. You could stage them to emphasize the socio-political context if you want, but in the end their power and universality lies in the deeply personal drama. The real tragedy is always in the heart of the tragic figure who, faced with his circumstances, chooses a fatal path. As Sondheim puts it, his story is about how Sweeney's "vengeance eats itself."

So, putting aside your disappointment in not getting YOUR Sweeney, could you give your opinion on whether Burton et al. succeeded or failed at making the movie they set out to make?

A means to enlighten this conversation would seem an unavailing act; however, I will attempt to assert my outlook without appearing overly discourteous or critical.

Regarding the subject of Johnny Depp’s usage of accents, I would like to inform that there is a definite discrepancy between Sweeney Todd and Jack Sparrow. Jack Sparrow exhibits a drunken cockney accent whilst Sweeney displays, as he is meant to, a distorted form of cockney emphasizing his despondency.

Without mentioning the aforementioned ancestry of this movie, or the political attacks against capitalism in relevance to Marxism, or the relevance of Holocaust and Genocidal references (of which I believe is precisely preposterous, being that a villain aspiring to destroy humanity is frequently present throughout literature), I would like to consider the review in itself.

Mr. Greene, I find your “review� to be a biased assault upon the supposed meanings and mannerisms created by Tim Burton’s SWEENY rather than the movie itself. I question your validity as a reviewer if the scale for a review is varying amongst movies. Bias should not be interpreted by a critic, for a critic must be unbiased and not present his opinion but the actuality of the essence of the film he his reviewing. For instance, reviewing a film meant to be mediocre, as in Freddy vs. Jason, on a scale of mediocrity is unfair in comparison to the reviewing of films such as Chicago and Sweeney Todd on a scale of expected brilliance.

Basically, your bias, predetermination, and history with Sondheim, should not be relevant in constructing an accurate review of the movie at hand. For, using a congruent scale, there is no Earthy way that one could regard a horrid movie like Freddy vs. Jason in a higher light than an inspirational, meaningful film such as SWEENEY.

Therefore, I find your quality as a critic deficient in the merit required to be accepted into sites such as Rotten Tomatoes, given your bias and predetermination; however, if you were to submit this review as an unprofessional critic, as in a reader, I would be staggered by its brilliance and develop a profound for respect you, Mr. Greene. Consequentially…

Eric,

Evidently, I concur with the previous post written by Cass.

Eric,

Guys:

Wow, what an amazing string this has become. Because you're taking this so seriously I will give you a detailed response -- I'm going to have to start limiting my participation though --as fun as this is I have new things to write. So, in answer to your various posts:

I think there's far more to the original critique (the review) than simply the socio-political dimensions of the work -- this forum has focused on that area because it was precipitated by an addendum I added early on acknowledging Sondheim's distaste for Brecht analogies. Brecht takes up half a sentence in the piece, and the duo of Sondheim and Prince are sharing the emphasis at that.

Also: I think it's pretty clear within the review what else I dislike about the movie -- among other things, Depp's inappropriateness (sorry Deppomaniacs), and that Burton's made another in his series of Murnau-meets-Roger-Corman films out of Sondheim's musical -- unsuccessfully in my view, because the source he chooses to adapt to this rather simple vision is too rich to fit within those limitations, and because SWEENEY's horror comes from what the review calls it's "garish plausability," ie, that as gaudy as the play was, Todd has too much psychology and human weight to be transformed successfully into a wafer-thin Halloween mask.

For an alert viewer watching the picture, the music and lyrics keep reminding us that the Goth wardrobe Burton has clothed the piece in doesn't suit it, and is four or five sizes too small. This would be true even if one hasn't seen the original SWEENEY; on the other hand, claiming that having a detailed knowledge of the source disqualifies a person from having an informed opinion of the film made from that source is self-contradictory on its face. If you read my FREDDY/JASON review, you will see that it is actually deeply aware of the sources that movie is based on (the other films in the franchises) and that's part of what's weighted in making the judgement. Ignorance is never bliss, guys, it's just ignorance.

Does the film succeed on its own terms? Not for me. The visual imagery -- borrowed from inappropriate sources grounded in the supernatural poetics of German silent film, in Universal monster pictures and Hammer horror, and in the late and vaguely psychedlic Corman Poe pictures -- is eye candy I suppose, but it has no message to convey that has all that much to do with a man who kills by stealth, plotting and the mundane apparatus of his trade. Sweeney isn't a supernatural figure; he hasn't been bitten by a werewolf; he can't be vanquished with a sprig of garlic; he wasn't reanimated by the charge of electricity that gave Elsa Lanchester that shock of white hair Burton has borrowed for him from THE BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN. He's a victim of the inequities of a society that allows the powerful (the judge, who DOES NOT appear in any of the previous Sweeney tales as far as I can tell) to victimize the powerless with impugnity. And that is still part of this work, even in Burton's hands. His choice to visualize everything as if it was a Golem picture CONFLICTS with the plot of the movie he's making.

The decisions Burton has taken to remove the chorus and so forth are explicable I suppose in that Burton needs to do this stuff if his Monster Chiller Theatre SWEENEY is to have even a shot at coherence. But turning one of the greatest and most complex of American musicals into a inapporpriately art-directed singing version of the old and simplistic Todd Slaughter SWEENEY by way of inappropriate junior Cocteau-isms does not make for either a unifeid piece of filmmaking nor a satisfying picturization of Sondheim.

Burton re-simplifies what Sondheim (and Prince and Wheeler) took from a simple source and then labored so hard to render complex. As Sondehim's still-sophisticated music and lyrics (though truncated) are unavoidably present, Burton's horror movie keeps clashing and clanging up against them, leaving them to call to his from the distance, like a heroine locked in a far off watch tower, in need of a rescue that will never come.

Eric: I appreciate your enthusiasm, but I don't respond to personal attacks, as the web is too full of them, and I think they already reflect on the writer more than they ever can on he who is written about. I think my many published works (including a book on film) are all the defense my legitimacy needs.

I think you should all put your copies of Roget's Thesaurus away. It's just a movie - I've seen it - and I enjoyed it enough to go to iTunes and download Len Cariou and Victor Garber's "Johanna". So, as Warren Oates said, "Lighten up, Francis"

"Burton re-simplifies what Sondheim (and Prince and Wheeler) took from a simple source and then labored so hard to render complex."

What exactly did Sondheim et al render complex?

Hal Prince may have created a complex theatrical context for the show in its orginal presentation, that some feel was inappropriate, but Sondheim's score and Wheeler's book is a very good adaptation of the Bond play, which may be plot-heavy but really is simple structure.

Burton's version is very much in tune with Sondheim's view that this is a Grand Guignol/blood tub thriller and Burton's stylization fits the bill completely.

I have no enthusiasm, and apologize if you believe I was attacking your character(of which I attribute to a person), for I was definitey not. I was simply attacking your legitimacy as a reviewer, not your ability as one. You are very intelligent and I consider your points valid, just not the review.

I do not assault simply negative reviews, but any that do not appear to be subjective and relevant to the general public. A newspaper editorial, for example, is a much more reliable source in most cases.

By the way, I clicked on a link for this article within a message board, so decided to briefly respond, for it looked like a rather interesting topic.

Eric,

A pleasure to read some of the most intelligent comments I've seen on RT. However, aside from the trades, reviews of "Sweeney Todd" were embargoed until opening day, 12/21. Your posting early puts other online critics at a disadvantage, Ray.

Derek:

I include Bond in the group who created this interpretation -- sorry if that wasn't clear -- HE'S the one who brought in the judge plotline originally as far as I know and he's who I was referring to when I made that comment. He is always given a credit in the programs of the major stage productions as "adaptor;" his work is an important part of the mix that created the show.

re: Sondheim, Wheeler, Prince are lumped together intentionally because they created the original show and they did it as a collective (so in the latest post I'm not parsing out Sondheim by himself as sole creator of the work -- and by the way, he doesn't either). Maybe Sondheim regrets the social context Prince brought into the mix, but because he's a very devout believer in collaboration, it still infuses the libretto and lyrics (among other things) as earlier posts by me and others have indicated, and therefore it's an integral part of the piece that can't simply be dismissed as irelevant (because it's there whether you wish it weren't or not). This is true no matter who adapts the work.

If you study the nature of the Sondheim/Prince collaboration it was never one where Sondheim merely handed him a text and said "make this." Sondheim is a great and friendly collaborator who continued working to make the Prince-directed productions as solid as they could be right up to the wire. That means Prince's ideas (if indeed they are just Prince's ideas -- I see many of them recurring in ASSASSINS which Prince had nothing to do with) found some of their expression in Sondheim's music and lyrics, and they're still there, as many of these posts have pointed out. So all props to Stephen -- he's a genius and I love him -- but if he wants to try to say his show is just the Todd Slaughter SWEENEY TODD with tunes, I think he's selling himself short (and I also don't think he's trying to say that).

We are getting a very carefully crafted blast of this kind of stuff from Sondheim right now, by the way, all very meticulously orchestrated by DreamWorks and their marketing department, as notice the pre-emptive piece in the New York Times today (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/16/theater/16gree.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&pagewanted=print) designed to head off the music critics and opera purists who are destined to be upset by the very severe truncation of the score once they get a chance to see the picture. You will note that in every video interview of Sondheim he is sitting in an empty villa in the same framing and clothes. This is because all that video was generated by the studio publicity department -- NOT by journalists. It's marketing, and manipulated to get out the messages that suit their plans for the film.

The studio is marketing SWEENEY as a horror movie -- and Stephen is okay with that. I'm glad for him, and I hope it makes him a lot of money. I don't think he's misrepresenting his position exctly, but I suspect the more nuanced aspects of his views on the show may re-emerge later in this process (when Oscars not box office on the major concern).

As to what's new and complex about the Sondheim Sweeney:

He has psychology -- written in thick charcoal lines, it's true, but psychology nevertheless. He is not by any stretch a monochromatic "fiend" who just does bad thing 'cause he likes to (Mrs. Lovett isn't either -- she's amoral, but her tragic and pathetic love for Sweeney informs her behavior). Sweeney has reasons, and they are lingered over, predominantly in Sondheim's (very complex operatic) songs.

Otherwise Sweeney would just be the Joker -- a cackling evildoer who is bad because some people are.

The Joker -- now there's another analogy out of Burton's work that might have been included in the piece. If you're going to try to render SWEENEY that way, why not just do the whole thing as a stunt show attraction at a theme park? Or perhaps put the characters on ice skates?

Anonymous online critic:

Thank you for the praise, that was very nice of you.

re: Review Embargo 12/21 --

Variety and the Reporter broke the embargo, not me -- and once someone publishes, the embargo is no longer in effect. If DreamWorks tells you otherwise you should tell them they're wrongand cannot selectively allow some to publish and others not to (I told them this in no uncertain terms the day the Variety and Reporter reviews came out). Several of the RT critics (Emmanuel Levy for example) are web only reviewers by the way, so this is really a question of individual publication judgement at this point.

Publish away -- they can't supress you once others have permitted others to do so. Not only would that be unethical but also if we allowed them that privilege they would surely start feeding films to the rubber stamp smiley face approval writers and keeping them for as long as possible out of the hands of everyone else.

Reformatted post excerpt to make the Sondheim link active:

We are getting a very carefully crafted blast of this kind of stuff from Sondheim right now, by the way, all very meticulously orchestrated by DreamWorks and their marketing department, as notice the pre-emptive piece in the New York Times today:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/16/theater/16gree.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&pagewanted=print

designed to head off the music critics and opera purists who are destined to be upset by the very severe truncation of the score once they get a chance to see the picture. You will note that in every video interview of Sondheim he is sitting in an empty villa in the same framing and clothes. This is because all that video was generated by the studio publicity department -- NOT by journalists. It's marketing, and manipulated to get out the messages that suit their plans for the film. etc.

"if he wants to try to say his show is just the Todd Slaughter SWEENEY TODD with tunes, I think he's selling himself short"

He's not saying that. He's been consistent about his view of Sweeney for years, since its inception, he envisaged a Grand Guignol musical.

The important issue with Bond's version of the Sweeney story was that the characters were given motivation and a plot. That's there in this film in spades and I think the person who is selling that short is yourself, in all honesty.

The socio-political dimension which really is marginal in the text of the musical AND the original play, is obviously not over-emphasized as much as it was in the original production, as Prince has said none of the major revivals following his have made the choice to delve into that - my particular bias is that's a good thing because it doesn't bear too lengthy analysis - I'll agree it's there - the show is set in Victorian London, class and the vagaries of the system will undoubtedly play a part as it does in so much of British literature, it's understood as part of the mood music.

I'm aware of Sondheim and Prince's collaborative methods - and this is the piece when cracks began to show. Sondheim wanted it small and scary; Prince couldn't cope with the main themes of the show, didn't like melodrama, disagreed with Sondheim on a major piece of exposition for the Judge, which would give the character real substance rather than reducing him to a stereotype of the class baddie (I regret that this was not added back but there is an extra dimension with his scene with Anthony). Prince's way into the show was to hang it on the context of the dehumanization of British society following the Industrial Revolution, an interpretation that certainly was ridiculed in the UK. However, it's certainly an interpretation and valid for a director to explore, but it's not really the main impetus or engine of Sweeney - which is about love, revenge, greed and lust, the things that attracted Sondheim in the first place. Burton gets that and his film reflects that successfully.

If you, the reader, are searching for an actual review of this movie, not simply a debate over this man's unsupported opinion, I suggest you read this unbiased piece (an average review of 7): http://www.reelzchannel.com/movie/229381/sweeney-todd-the-demon-barber-of-fleet-street?tab=review

"Where previous Sweeneys have found room in the character for both anguish and exultation amidst all the faraway looks and obsessional glowering, Depp skirts along the edge of the emotional chasm without ever really diving in."

The mostest stupidest verbosity I've ever in my life read... and I'm sitting here surveying my mind for a more complicated word for "read" just to be more loathsome... oh why, oh why?

Pedantry my dear! Pure pedantry!

Che:

"The most supidest verbosity I've ever in my life read" is the most worstest grammar. So we're even.

Derek:

Again, my critique of the film is not exclusively -- or even primarily -- socio-political. However... one last time...

I never said it's not a Grand Guignol musical. It is. A Grand Guignol musical with overt socio-political thematics -- and if you want to dismiss them as ineffective, that's fine, but that's a critique of the play, not of my critique of the movie.

For those of us who appreciate them as an added layer of meaning, they're a significant portion of what makes SWEENEY so much more important as a work of art than Prince's other (apolitical) foray into this sort of thing with Andrew Lloyd Webber's "Phantom of the Opera." But they're in there -- a lot -- so if you think they're just window-dressing, seems to me you're saying you don't like something primal in the show very much.

They're in the event structure: the flourishing of Mrs. Lovett's failed business through murderous application of the law of supply and demand and cannibalistic consumption by the citizens of London as discussed elsewhere in this string. And more importantly if you want to pin it all on Hal Prince, they're repeatedly in the lyrics, which Prince didn't write -- Sondheim did.

For the "the politics are Prince's not Sondheim's" folks, here's yet another set of Sondheim lyrics to add to the numerous examples provided by myself and others elsewhere in this string:

London described (at the very top of the play, when Anthony asks Sweeney to explain how he came to such dire straits):

There's a hole in the world like a great black pit
And the vermin of the earth inhabit it
And its morals aren't worth what a pig could spit
And it goes by the name of London

At the top of the hole sit the privileged few
making mock of the vermin in the lower zoo
Turning beauty into filth and greed

I too have sailed the world beheld its wonders
for the cruelty of men is more wonderous than Peru
And there's no place like London

[End Quote]

There's that pesky class struggle again -- the privileged few above, mocking the lower zoo in the name of filth and greed. And Sweeney describes his complaint the first time he articulates it as a MORAL one -- a reaction to the UNIVERSAL moral cruelty he has seen throughout the world, a fighting of fire with fire.

In fact, over the course of the play he is constant. He justifies every one of his actions in the same way Chaplin does as the similarly politicized serial killer in MONSIEUR VERDOUX: he is a mirror of society, he reflects the social violence he sees all around him, he is entitled to do unto others as has been done unto him and his.

I believe one of Sondheim's plans during this period was to musicalize VERDOUX by the way -- similarly a genre exercise with thriller dynamics (Chaplin called it "a comedy of murders") with a strong socio-political stinger in its tale. The two works make the same point. Sondheim couldn't have been disinterested in it if he wanted to do it twice.

If you think social criticism doesn't belong in the show, that's fine. But you need to take that up with Sondheim the lyricist, not just Prince or Christopher Bond or me.

And of course I strongly disagree.

As I've said "the pesky class struggle" is understood, it's part of the fabric of the show, one takes it as read – maybe being British one doesn't need it to be explained, it's there and it's a blinding insight into the bleeding obvious when it's brought to one’s attention - something that obviously, as Brits, Wheeler and Bond understood and Sondheim and Burton have got.

Selective quoting will undoubtedly support your thesis as a piece of exception reporting. However, Sweeney is a man driven to the edge by the need for revenge based on his love for his family, as Chris Bond explained this is a show driven by aspects of love; it's real primal, blood, shit and guts stuff that's been keeping drama going since Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides kicked off. That's what Sweeney is about and I go back that's what Burton gets and that's what he's served up, masterfully.

I apologize to all who have had to view this horrid review. Please make no more comments, for I am greatly disgruntled by many of your inadequate responses. The moronity of the viewing public is far greater than I had anticipated.

Is that "moronity" based on the fact that a number of people have disagreed with you?

Ray,
thats a great way to defend your review. call you readers morons. Congrats on the epic writing there. By the way, I don't know how you can say that Sweeney, in any of the productions thus far, can be considered exultant, except perhaps when he kills. I will admit that I haven't seen the movie, but having seen the play, watched tapes of the performances, and read the play, all Sweeney truly does IS brood. My only question to you is this; did you go in expecting not to like the movie? As I said, I can't relate to it as I haven't seen it, but it seems that must be the case, given your bashing of Depp and Burton on the whole. If you are going to answer, please avoid name calling and reverting to such child like behavior.

Oh and Ray just one more thing... Maybe I am confused here, but in the version I have seen live, and in the book, the Judge most certainly appears. He even has his own song, tragically cut from the film.

Actually Christian, this is not Stephen Sondheim, it is Ray Greene, making a point...

Just as I'm not Stpehen Sondheim, the "morons" comment was written by a person who signed their name as me but was not me -- among other things I know "mornity" is not a word, and the bogus Ray Greene does not.

I suppose this reveals a design flaw in BOXOFFICE's interface. It would be a shame if this person's cowardice caused the openness of this system (a virtue) to have to be altered into something more rigorous and gatekeeperish.

I have been and remain delighted by the high calibre of the conversation here as I've said many times -- I would never insult the reader this way.

I'll see if I can't get BOXOFFICE to remove the bogus Greene comment, and perhaps to ban its perpatrator.

And no, I did not go in expecting not to like the movie. I hoped it would be terrific. I've loved some of Burton's work in the past, I admire Johnny Depp as a performer, and I think Sondheim is the single most brilliant composer the American musical theatre has ever produced. I approached the film openly and with optimism. It didn't quite pan out.

Ray,

I hate to inject this banality into such an informed discussion, but re: the embargo--to say that once Variety, the Hollywood Reporter, and Emanuel Levy post reviews, the embargo is no longer in effect and every other online critic can post away...is like saying that once Sweeney cuts your throat, it's OK for every other barber in the world to do the same.

DreamWorks does not have the technical ability to delete embargoed postings. The studio can ban their critics from future screenings, and I wish they would. But I don't get the logic of saying that two wrongs make a right. What studios can do to onliners if they see these violations is simply to take away our privileges and give us screenings on opening day (if we're lucky to get them at all). We have the right to pan films. That's within our jurisdiction. They have the right to demand delayedpost time, right up until opening day. Give Caesar his due.

Ok going back amd rereading that post makes me realize I was hasty in my assumption. Being the case, I take back that particular barb. Here I go with assumptions again ( I know, I know, I am 0 for 2 here, but I am German, hence the stubbornness.),
but is it then safe to say that you wrote the other reply that I referred to, the one saying that the Judge was not not in any productions? If so, unless gravely incorrect, (grammar?)I have to disagree with you. He was at least in the Broadway Revival production. Again, I may have misunderstood you. (reading english I sometimes become confused)

Christian

p.s. I I accept my humble pie, and hbad I read all your real comments, I would have seen that you wouldn't use a personal attack. I hope you did not take mine as one.

Anonymous journalist:

We're journalists, my friend. Making DreamWorks' marketing plan work they way they would like for it to is not our job. Reporting and commenting on films and filmmakers as soon as possible is. That's why they call it "news."

I admit that (many) film journalists allow themselves to be manipulated in all sorts of ways that no other writers about any other business would in exchange for access - to celebs as well as movies. I think a lot of it is disgraceful. I don't know if you've ever done a junket, but watching a large number of my "peers" whip celebrity photos out of their press kits and get stars to sign them at the end of the group interview is one of the most grotesque things I've ever seen, and made me nauseated to be a part of this profession. I don't do junkets any more as a result.

But saying that a journalist who has been scooped by another outlet has a moral obligation to allow that other outlet a monopoly on reporting on something if the studio says so seems masochistic and unprofessional to me. And that's what Variety and the Reporter did when they published. There was no "embargo" to obey after that -- an "embargo" is an absolute news blackout. A couple of flaring lightbulbs in the room and it is no longer dark. There's no such thing as a little bit pitch black.

If DreamWorks made a big stink about the Variety and Reporter reviews and cut off their access and said this never should have happened that would be one thing -- I might have seen their point sort of, though I don't know if I would have conceded that an embargo was still in force But they did no such thing. When I contacted then they just shrugged and refused to confirm or deny whether Variety or the Reporter had permission to publish.

So I informed them that as far as I was concerned, this meant there was no embargo -- a courtesy I didn't need to extend to them but that I felt they deserved -- and then left the decision up to BOXOFFICE as to whether or not to publish.

They did so, and I'm glad they did. It was a principalled decision.

By the time my review posted, nine other outlets had already come to the same conclusion.

Only you can decide if you want to run the risk of pissing off a studio whose goodwill you need to get access, and I would respect either choice (I ran a magazine myself and I know how hard these decisions can be). My view is that the moral side of the argument for a journalist is on publishing as soon as is ethical, and the ethics of this decision were with getting the piece into type pronto once others had violated DreamWorks access stipulations -- or so it seems to me.

Journalists owe their primary allegiance, and to getting out the truth as they see it as fast as possible. Or so it seems to me.

Christian:

The SWEENEY story is an urban legend dating to 1840 in Britain. It started in the "Penny Dreadful" pulp magazines of the era and then became a stageplay. An actor named Todd Slaughter toured with it for years (his stage name being a variation on the character) and even made a film version in the 1930s (or 40s, I can't remember).

I haven't read all these earlier sources, but I believe in all these earlier versions there was no judge -- Sweeney was a sort of body snatcher figure who killed people specifically to provide Mrs. Lovett with the meat for her pies in a straight and maniacal commercial arrangement.

By adding the judge Christopher Bond introduced class distinctions into the piece -- and he further dramatized them by having the upper class characters speak blank verse and the working class characters speak cockney prose. Sondheim's version is based on Bond.

That's why I highlighted the addition of the judge in "this" (the Bond-Sondheim-Wheeler) SWEENEY.

By the way, the judge's song -removed by Prince in 1979 and now by Burton -- really isn't so very good. You can hear it on the Original Broadway Cast album. It's a bit kinky I guess -- he's flagellating himself and orgasms at the end -- but in a kind of desperate, Playboy Party Jokes, old school way. And the churgling melodic progression is easily the weakest devised for this show if you ask me.

I knew that it did date back to the penny dreadful area, which was how I initially found out about it ( I have an interest in them.) to be precise, the Todd Slaughter movie was produced in 1936 ( thank you, RT). Thank you for clearing up the judge issue, as I thought you were referring to the newest Sweeney, the movie, not to the Soundheim version.

on a side note, I found the Judges song to be quite enjoyable. The scene sounds rather delightfully disturbing from the script, and I rather enjoy the pacing of the music itself. What I really enjoy about it is that it adds even more depth to teh Judges character, making sure he is not just a run of the mill villain, and actually has misgivings about what he is doing.

"By the way, the judge's song -removed by Prince in 1979 and now by Burton -- really isn't so very good. You can hear it on the Original Broadway Cast album. It's a bit kinky I guess -- he's flagellating himself and orgasms at the end"

Obviously it's a matter of taste, but I wouldn't be at all dismissive of it in that way - Doyle for instance used it very well in his latest version it's has a great deal more to it than the rather embarrassed description you’ve given it - it's necessary for a real understanding of the role. The exclusion, in Bond's words, reduces the role to a class stereotype and he includes the song when directing the show - to give more meat to the role and a sense of the threat that Johanna has. The Judge's Johanna is also part of a trio of Johannas sung by the men obsessed with her - and Sondheim is quoted in the NYT as having been unhappy at its exclusion from the film but being content with Logan's replacement scene, which again develops the part of the Judge.

Apropos the Judge and class, this does seem to have got you into a pickle. As seems to have been mentioned before, Bond borrowed the convention from Shakespeare in his use of verse for the toffs and the vernacular for the plebs. Undoubtedly, it gives texture to the piece and of course makes the distinction between the classes, just as Shakespeare and others have done down the centuries. The Judge doesn't introduce the class issue alone he's a necessary engine for the plot, the class thing, I would suggest, comes apoor second to that and would be expected, given the locale and time that this piece is set.

Ray, I read your response to my last post and I feel like it was an honest review. So we may disagree, but then again, I'm not out to convert anyone to my preferred version of Sweeney. Everyone will hopefully get a chance to make up their own minds. I think your "revised" review made it much clearer what YOU wanted and expected out of it, so that a reader could decide whether they had the same priorities and might reach the same conclusions as you. And you critiqued it based on what you felt its creators were attempting. That's all we can ask of any reviewer, after all.

The history of the world, my love
Is those below serving those up above.
How gratifying, for once, to know
That those above will serve those down below...

Re: "selective quoting": Sometime when I'm REALLY bored, I'll compile a complete list of lines from the show which quite simply ARE social criticism, no "interpretation" required -- and which seem quite bizarrely insistent if one operates under a determination that such meaning was "never" intended. The libretto is quite littered with them, and as Ray says, whatever Sondheim's original intentions may have been, his finished lyrics support Prince's staging rather too consistently to be entirely coincidental.

As I said earlier, that aspect of the original production (and indeed, of the show as written) is far from unproblematic; but I'm at a loss as to why anyone would want it expunged entirely. Part of me wants to put forth the heretical argument that, when read as a simple melodrama about a bunch of screwed-up characters whose relation to their social environment is mere background trivia and quaint art-direction, "Sweeney" becomes thin gruel indeed.

Re: the Judge's "Johanna/Mea Culpa," whatever we may think of it (which is kind of beside the original point), Prince gave his reasons for cutting it as (1) running time and (2) he found the song's sexual content "pretty gruesome". Both of these explanations sound plausible -- and while the effect may have been to deny the Judge whatever shreds of "complexity" the song might afford him, I see no reason to assume that confining him to two-dimensional "class villain[y]", *per se*, was Prince's intention. Indeed, the "gruesome" comment might lead one to infer that, even to observers as relatively sophisticated as Prince, "complexity" may not register too strongly when it's being delivered by a character while masturbating at his adopted "daughter"'s keyhole. It's easy enough to imagine the casual viewer coming away from "Mea Culpa" with little more to say about the Judge than that he's even more odious and perverse than they had previously imagined.

Finally, re: the eagerness with which many viewers rush to "defend" ST from the taint of politics, and to shore up its claim to "universality" (it's not about class, the argument goes, but about Human Nature -- the latter being, it is presumed, a far larger, nobler and more enduring subject than the former, or at least an inherently more entertaining one). This reaction is hardly surprising in a post-Cold-War world where capitalism is percieved as natural law, no more alterable or escapable than gravity. But it is sadly ironic.

re: Scenic

I love your posts -- you say what I'm thinking better than I can.

re: Cass -- that was a very nice post. Thanks.

re: THE DREADED "B" WORD

One more thing: I've been looking into Sondheim's relationship to Brecht and to politics and it is far more complex than has been suggested here. Here's what I discovered:

- Sondheim's always spoken of Brecht grudgingly -- not so much because of the specifics of Brecht's politics but because of what Sondheim considers the hamfisted didacticism of Brecht's presentation. In a conversation about ASSASSINS quoted in Meryl Seacrest's Sondheim biography, Sondheim specifically characterizes himself as a strongly liberal political thinker who likes to get those ideas into his shows -- but via characters in the foreground through which ideas in the background flow, which he specifically characterizes as the opposite of Brecht's approach. So SWEENEY'S strong characters with a combination of emotional and political subtexts would seem to fit that template; in other words, this is a conversation about nuance not absolutes.

Sondheim wants ideas in his shows, but he wants them to emerge naturalistically through character and frequently conversational lyrics -- something he learned as a youth when he was essentially apprenticed to the great lyricist Oscar Hammerstein of Rodgers and Hammerstein fame. HOWEVER...

- Just before he wrote COMPANY, Sondheim worked for a year on a project called A PRAY BY BRECHT that was to be directed by Jerome Robbins, scripted by John Guare and with music by Leonard Bernstein (most of the old WEST SIDE STORY team). It was an adaptation of Brecht's THE EXCEPTION AND THE RULE and Sondheim hated working on it -- it was a favor to Bernstein and Robbins, and when it fell apart, Sondheim was relieved. BUT...

- As he began working on COMPANY, the experience was still fresh in his mind, and Sondheim later admitted that COMPANY assumed a Brechtian shape as a result. He defines this as the characters singing about ideas and concepts rather than engaging in dramatic situations and sining through the emotional plotpoints of the show.

- COMPANY is considered to be the radical turning point in Sondheim's development. His reluctant immersion in Brecht was part of what precipitated the change.

- Interestingly, COMPANY is an apolitical show, especially as compared to SWEENEY (or PACIFIC OVERTURES or ASSASSINS) -- I think it's brilliant, but Brecht would have considered it self-indulgent sentimental bourgeiose twaddle. So Sondheim appears to define "Brechtian" as a type of PRESENTATION, and not so much in terms of things like social criticism.

And that means there's no reason to assume he is in any way displeased with having social criticism in SWEENEY TODD -- he just wants it to emerge believably from the characters and the world.

Which, in its own lurid way, and with the exception of some significant bracketing (the chorus that you won't find in the film for example) I personally think it does.

PS to everybody -- do you believe this discussion string? What an amazing creation you've all given us. -R

Wow, I agree with that entire post, Ray! That's a scary thought! I agree that what Sondheim rejected of Brecht was not the political content or sub-text, but the way it is presented. Sondheim used his lyrics not only to drive the story, but to describe the social context of the story. The lyrics have been a constant in all the productions, but the rest of the play has been subject to many interpretations, everything from Teeny Todd to Marat/Todd (I stole that from somewhere; wish I'd thought of it first!) Burton's interpretation is to let the lyrics speak for themselves. He actually added more songs back into the original adaptation, and took lines of dialog out.

I'm curious as to why a reviewer might feel compelled to respond to posts on an anonymous message board. Does not the review stand on its own?

Why are the two things mutually exclusive? The review can speak for itself, and I can (if I want to) speak additionally for me.

I don't think of myself as some Moses figure who wanders down from the mountain with ultimate truth in his hands and then presents it to the world on a take it or leave it basis.

I've been participating in this forum because the other commentators have been bright and gracious and articulate, and because it's been fun.

Why can't anybody just chill out and enjoy a movie without having to rip it apart?

and to everyone trying to argue with Mr. Ray Greene about his harsh review:

these are his opinions. Just because he feels this way doesn't mean you have to.
In my opinion, the movie will probably be great.

An exceedingly minor point (though a fun one) -- I believe the Bernstein/Guare/Robbins show that Sondheim worked on was called "A Pray by Blecht" -- reversing the two liquid consonants (in your post above, you've made them both 'R's, keeping the playwright's name intact).

Someone correct me if I'm wrong on this. But I always thought it was a great title, and even funnier insofar as it appears to accurately reflect Sondheim's own feelings about Brecht.

You're correct -- it's a typo -- London's full of them...

cheers - R

Because this string has become an odd kind of resource about SWEENEY thanks to all of you, here's one more item to hang here: original Broadway SWEENEY producer Martin Richards chiming in with his recollections about the Prince "industrial" concept, introduced, sez him, to save the show when it wasn't hanging together in early development:

Martin Richards: Hal always does a run-through for friends in the business, chorus kids, gypsies, to get a reaction. Usually they're a positive audience. But at the run-through for Sweeney Todd, it all went down the toilet.

Stephen Sondheim came over to me. "Where's the show? Where's the show? What are we going to do?

Sondheim doesn't speak to everybody, I was honored.

We got together in his townhouse. There was a big controversy. People said to each other, "I didn't want to do the show in the first place," this and that.

Stephen and Hal had words. Finally Hal said, "If everyone stays out of my hair for forty-eight hours and leaves me alone, I will restage the whole thing." He decided to place the show in the middle of the Industrial Revolution, when machines were dwarfing the whole world. That's when everything came together.

Quite often Hal starts by getting a whole picture and saying, "This is the way I want the set to look." For Sweeney Todd he wanted us to buy a steel factory. We had to buy the whole thing in order to get the pieces that we needed. It cost a fortune.

We used as much Grand Guignol - the horror theater of France - as the audience could take. We had these special trick razors that made blood come out of the razors. One time in previews the blood ran down the shirts. There was a very heavy reaction. So we cut it down to a little drip, just the suggestion.

from "It Happenned on Braodway," an oral history of the Broadway musical by Harvey Frommer and Myrna Katz Frommer; Harcourt, 1998

Agreed. And I, for one, have never been a johnny deep fan. As I've always told my friends - "Depp" has no "Depth"

Bless you, Mr. Greene, for getting it right.

I'm astonished by the number of reviewers who mention, almost parenthetically, that the singing is no more than adequate, but....

But of course, SINGING, especially that of the two major characters, is the means through which this wonderful work works, if it is to work at all. Thus the hole at the movie's very center.

I disagree with you about HB's Mrs. Lovett. I found her a whispering goth Ophelia--an improvement, to a degree, on the execrable Patti Lupone Wiemar-zombie version, but not by much. (Will all future Mrs Lovetts be played IN REACTION to Angela Lansbury's drolly demented yet brilliantly vocally CHARATERIZED take?)

The major problem, as you say, is that the director never engaged with the musical material, which is to say, with the piece's emotional depths; rather he glossed over it and them in every sense, substituting adolescent hip-glam/visual candy for, well, feeling.

Best review I've read at BoxOffice, comparable to Owen Gleiberman, EW. Great job, Ray.

I think this review is great! I'm shocked at how some of the commenters have tapped into their more base emotions and insulted and attacked Ray because he has a different opinion than their own. Good for him for going against the status quo and having his own mind. As far as why he is commenting at all, that is wonderful. I could see if he didn't comment someone else saying he was a snob. Someone will always find something to complain about.

As an artist, I find it interesting when a main complaint concerning this movie is basically that it’s too “Tim Burton.� An easily identifiable style is something to strive for in the visual world. I don’t see why it shouldn’t be in the theatrical. Burton’s trademark atmosphere and style is what has earned him such a following in the first place, and I think the movie’s drabness adds to the desperation and loneliness of the film, while the goth zaniness fits in nicely with its black comedy elements. Nor do I see why an analogy using a broken mirror is more tiresome than that of a caged bird. And to those posters who don’t like his style in the first place, if you don’t like the artist, don’t go to his gallery.
I, personally, was delighted by the movie, without knowing anything about its long history until now. I went with a large group of non-musical aficionados, and we all left happy. (At least as much as the ending could permit!) I found both laughs and irony in Depp’s performance, found the eye candy delectable, and found the plot and characters sumptuous. But I think, most importantly, Burton has done something that the musical could not, made it palatable for those who can’t stand musicals, which is pretty impressive given its adherence to the original.

So kudos for Burton and meat pies for the rest!

That said, I must also say that this review has been far more thought provoking and informative than your average Sweeny review and thread and has satiated much of my burgeoning curiosity for the original.

To Jody -- Aw shucks. Thanks!

To I´m Hungry -- Very thoughtful and well'written post, and I´m happy for you that you enjoyed the movie so much. As I believe I said a long time ago in this string, I would never want to write a review that kept someone from enjoying something that was to their own taste just because it was not quite to mine. Two things though (forgive me, I am in Costa Rica at an internet cafe and can´t figure out where the colon is on this keyboard so I will use dashes) --

1. I like Tim Burton´s style in many and perhaps most cases. I really do. I think I made that clear elsewhere in this string, and in the review when I talk about his stature as an artist without irony or criticism. I just don´t think his style is appropriate to all materials, or that it should be appliqued reflexively onto a truly masterful pre'existing piece without so much as a negotiation between the style of the original work and the style of BATMAN RETURNS. My reasoning is in the original piece, so no reason to reiterate it. But I don´t recall saying anywhere in there that Burton is overrated or anything -- I just said he defaulted into his rote creative responses here and unfortunately this made the movie less than it should have been -- for me at least.

2. re -- ¨most importantly, Burton has done something that the musical could not, made it palatable for those who can’t stand musicals¨ '--
No offense, but aren´t you kinda sorta siding with the review a bit here? I mean, isn´t that just a little like saying he makes comedies that are palatable to people without a sense of humor?

Again, thanks for participating, and thanks to you both for putting this string over the hundred comment mark, I was kinda hoping that would happen.

Adios from Central America -- Ray

This remains one of the worst reviews of the movie.

The review itself, and the numerous posts that followed it, proved for interesting reading that I hadn't anticipated when I clicked on the link.
I have to say I'm in the same situation as "I'm Hungry" - I entered the movie theater hoping for an excellent film, and came out stating that I enjoyed the movie immensely. The musical score was wonderfully done (however, seeing as I am not aficionado of music, perhaps I am not the best person to be judge of that), I personally adored the lineup of actors, and many of cast members performed their roles wonderfully. I can't say I'm entirely pleased with whatever Ray Greene has said in his review, but he has explained himself and his opinions quite well, and truth be told, everyone is entitled to their own opinion, however negative or positive it might be. However, I do have to agree with two points that Ray made - I adore Johnny Depp, just for the record, and enjoyed his role as Sweeney Todd, but when he started singing in the beginning of the movie, I burst out laughing because he could not possibly disguise his telltale voice, and perhaps he was not the best actor for this role. But he still executed it wonderfully, in my opinion. The second point I have to agree on is Helena Bonham Carter being an amazing Mrs. Lovett. In many interviews, she has said that she practiced singing and baking simultaneously so that she could bake in rhythm to her songs, and all her efforts have not gone to waste, for she has some of the most amusing scenes in that movie (her first song, "The Worst Pies in London" was excellent). And the expression in her eyes was priceless when she locked Toby in the meat grinding cellar (or wherever it was she led him) and realized that he had learned too much and would therefore have to be killed.
I adored the movie overall, enjoyed the plot, music, gore, scenery, and cast, and was quite pleased with the fact that I had not wasted my money on the movie ticket, although that does make me one of the people without a sense of humor for whom these comedies are made palatable (I laughed very hard at that line in one of the posts, for it may be true). However, Ray Greene, out of curiosity, how would you rate this film on a scale of 10? Forgive me if you have already done so in your review or a previous post, for I never saw a numerical rating, but then again, I may have missed it.
Thanks for the interesting review though Ray, and everyone else for their comments and posts. They really did serve as thought-stimulating reading, and I learned quite a bit of history about Sweeney Todd that I had not known before.

Impressed:

In answer to your numeric question: I think I gave this movie 2.5 out of 5 stars for the magazine version of the review.

This movie is seriously amazing. I love it. In a movie about a demon barber, I require some blood, and that is exactly what Tim Burton gave me. Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter, Alan Rickman and the rest of cast pulled off a stupendous job. Some critics are saying they were unsatisfied with their singing skills, but they left me hungry for more. I would give this movie a 5 of 5 job! It was the perfect marriage of horror, Tim Burton and a musical.

Not only is this the most objective, informed and honest review of this movie that I've seen anywhere, but the comments afterwards also show an impressive engagement by its author to all comers, aligned, opposed or simply amused. Having only just seen the movie myself(fearing, after having seen the previews, that it would be, well, exactly what it was), I think the only quibble I have with Ray is his impression of Bonham Carter; while I agree that her moment with Tobias is excellent, I think the rest of her performance is, like Depp's, too emotionally distant to care much about. The rest is dead on the mark.

Well done, indeed. If this is at all indicative of Boxoffice's reviews, I'll be sticking around.