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Sweeney Todd

Blackrat

He Who Lurks Beyond The Veil
So I saw this on weekend and decided to give a review. Now I could ofcourse go the way of my little Toreador friend with whom I saw it, and say: OMG OMG it was done by Tim Burton so it is so cool like you know, because all Tim Burton does is like awesome because it's done by Tim Burton, and no matter what I'll never admit that there was anything bad to say. (Yeah, I had to listen to that for fifteen minutes after the movie). But instead I'll try to do a little less biased review. Don't get me wrong, I did in fact enjoy the movie, it's just that lots of vision don't make up for lack of plot and too much meaningful staring.

Let's see:
Visually: Very beautiful movie in the macabre way I enjoy. Now how couldn't it be, it had many beautiful actors. The mood was well implanted to dark victorian London and costume desing was done to emphasis that. The blood (which was plenty) was tacky as always in these kinds of movies but oddly it fit well here. I rather suspect that it was intentionally made to look too bright. Mr Depp has a good voice and although he isn't a singer he has a knack for that. Same can't be said for all the actors. There was some amount of poor singing, a little more good singing and quite a lot of mediocre singing. (Oh this really was a musical in case anyone didn't know). I can't say for sure but I would guess that more than half of the lines were done singing.

Plot: There really was none. A barber get's mad for the death of his wife and goes on to a killing spree with lot's of singing. What can you say? It was weak to start with. Topple it with extreme predictability (I guessed "the Big Reveal" of the end in about ten minutes from the start), there really was only one thing that surpriced me and it was the fact that he did NOT kill a certain character.

There was way too much meaningfull staring around. They could have cut all that in half and it would have conveyed the message as well as did now.

The romantic subplots were there only to emphasis the drama of the ending and to give poor reason for certain events to happen. At one point I was really bored for one character to go into too lenghty moody singing about his futile love.

Can't thimk of more now. Overall, it was quite boring, but enjoyable if you happen to like this kind of macabre beauty.
 

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Blackrat said:
Plot: There really was none. A barber get's mad for the death of his wife and goes on to a killing spree with lot's of singing. What can you say? It was weak to start with. Topple it with extreme predictability (I guessed "the Big Reveal" of the end in about ten minutes from the start), there really was only one thing that surpriced me and it was the fact that he did NOT kill a certain character.

Sorry to break it to you....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweeney_Todd_(musical)

But as you can see.. there wasn't much of a plot to begin with.
 

Yeah I know it was a film adaptation of the musical. So in a way the plot part is as much review of the original as it's for the movie.
 


Heh. My thoughts exactly. But there were good moments in the movie too. I rather liked the scenes with "Signor Pirelli".[sblock=spoiler]He died too soon in my opinion.[/sblock]
 

I've not seen it myself, but I understand that Helena Bonham Carter was the stand-out actor in the piece (and I really like what I saw of her work in the snippets I've seen)
 

Plane Sailing said:
I've not seen it myself, but I understand that Helena Bonham Carter was the stand-out actor in the piece (and I really like what I saw of her work in the snippets I've seen)
Her role was difficult to pull and I think she did it very well. It takes a measure of talent to portray such a character in believable manner. I must say she deserves whatever honoraries she gets from this movie.
 

Personally, I really enjoyed the movie, even though sailor boy and his love interest did little for me. Hey, it's a movie about killing people and turning them into pies! You can't go wrong with that, or at least not with me :)
 


I'm never eating dinner at your place, John. Or yours, Horace. I just don't like your friends.

When I was in College the theater department put on a production of the musical. I wanted to see the movie but didn't get around to it. I'm waiting for it on DVD.
 
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