[innerSpaceman]

Warning: Loads of Spoilers in this Post ... I’m not tagging the entire post


Well, I have some more thoughts about Sweeney Todd, after having seen it again ... and then listening to the Broadway recording for the first time in decades.

Not surprisingly, perhaps, I like the movie less.

Quite surprisingly, though, I remain completely happy with Helena Bonham Carter's performance as Mrs. Lovett. Both her acting and her singing. Much as I love Angela Lansbury in the role, I think her singing style is - - much like Rex Harrison's - not quite real singing, but something uniquely her own. And so I rather enjoyed Carter's renditions of the songs in a more "normal" singing style. They are great songs, and I enjoy them both ways.

Johnny Depp, in the other hand ... well I like him less and less. As the film goes on, I think he becomes more and more ineffective. I think he handles the early songs and the early Todd pretty well ... but he's not up to the demands of "My Friends," for example, and his performance really goes downhill after Todd goes off the deep end on a serial murdering spree. I don't think completely catatonic is what's called for from that point on.

Burton's to blame as much as Depp for that. Most of Todd's songs from the second act are cut. And two of those are necessary to portray his dementia to the audience.

I don't think, we, as an audience, are really too upset that Todd slits throats indiscriminately or that Mrs. Lovett bakes people into pies. It's a black comedy, and these murderous rampages beget mostly amusement (though Burton was brilliant to add the gruesome, head-first body thuddings to the proceedings, as I don’t think the audience bats an eye at the buckets of spurting blood.).

No ... just as we really love Mrs. Lovett no matter what she does to strangers, but begin to have second thoughts about her once we learn she’s betrayed Todd .... in the show version, Todd only becomes despicable once we learn through song that he no longer even cares about being reunited with his daughter, Joanna, and is more enamored with grisly murder. Similarly, though - if we can read quickly enough - we learn he’s going to double-cross Anthony in the movie, the show has Todd sing about it, and it’s much more clear and chilling to the audience.

In other words, the characters can’t simply be murderers. We like that. They have to be nasty to each other to be unlikeable to us. I think Sweeney Todd should be somewhat unlikeable. And menacing. Which Deep is not. He may be angry, but he never seems menacing to me. Len Cariou comes off pretty menacing even on the cast recording ... I never even saw his actual performance, but it was reportedly quite effective.

Perhaps Burton didn’t want Deep’s Todd to be unlikeable, and so cut the songs where the audience might turn against him. I think that was a terrible mistake. It gives Depp really nothing to do in the second act ... and worse than dislike him, I think we simply lose interest in him.

Besides, the pathos at the end when Todd realizes he’s been lied to by Lovett and has murdered his beloved wife makes Sweeney very sympathetic in the end.

Lastly, and speaking of cutting songs ... I had forgotten how often "The Ballad of Sweeney Todd" is reprised throughout the show version. There are half a dozen times the tune is sung in one form or another. I understand the difficulties of adapting a "Greek chorus" to a film ... but for a piece which is essentially an operetta, leaving out the signature song which - though opening the show, closing the show, and constantly commenting on the action in the show - becomes the de-facto soul of the score .... well, leaving that out entirely is a calamity which renders the movie version something not quite a reasonable adaptation of this particular musical.

Too bad ... because Burton’s Sweeney Todd has much to recommend it.

And, fine, Tim Burton has a Q&A after tonight’s showing at The Dome, but it’s sold out. I have more than a few questions I’d like to ask him about what in the world he was thinking.

Bah.



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