We’ve got a secret for you: Sweeney Todd is a musical. We understand there might be some confusion about that, seeing as how the television ads don’t have a single note of singing in them, and if you blink during the theatrical trailer, you’ll miss the five seconds of Johnny Depp singing buried in the clip. Make no mistake, though. The vast majority of this film is told in song. On the one hand, it’s a shame that DreamWorks is acting ashamed of a musical as fun as Sondheim’s, full of challenging, yet entirely accessible songs. But it’s pretty clear that they’re counting on scoring some extra ticket sales by luring in horror fans with playing up Tim Burton’s dark, Gothic vision of the material. And that might be a smart move, because Sweeney Todd may just be that rare musical with broad appeal to audiences who might normally say they don’t care for the genre.
Which is no surprise, considering that neither the film’s director nor its star have much affinity for the genre themselves. Burton has crafted exactly the kind of musical he’d like to see, which is one that eschews big production numbers and full company set pieces in favor of a more naturalistic approach to the movie musical, if characters breaking into song can ever be considered naturalistic.
The story, which had been bouncing around in various forms for decades of British folk storytelling before Sondheim made it into an international musical sensation, is a fairly straightforward revenge tale: sweet natured barber Benjamin Barker is separated from his wife by a lustful judge who trumps up charges and sends him away for 15 years. Barker returns with a new name and bloodlust in his heart, but when vengeance is slow in coming, he turns his fury upon the hapless men sitting in his chair for a shave. His downstairs neighbor, Mrs. Lovett (Helena Bonham-Carter, playing the the character like a Cockney version of Fight Club‘s Marla), has a self-destructive taste for darkly mysterious psychopaths, and enters into a partnership with Todd to use the by-product of his murderous inclinations to supply her failing meatpie business. Hilarity ensues, just as in any of the many Broadway musicals concerning serial murder and cannibalism.
