By Ryan Parsons | Image property of Paramount Pictures.
Sweeney Todd
I had the opportunity to catch a press screening of Sweeney Todd last night and was too wracked with work to make it. Sucks, I know. To make myself feel better about missing it I figured we might as well take a look at reviews from those who have already seen it.
More Reviews for Sweeney Todd
I had hoped to lower the hype a bit by offering mixed reviews, but they have all so far been positive for Sweeney Todd. Will this tradition last up until the film's release? Hard to say, but it's looking pretty good...
Emanuel Levy
Dark, haunting, and unified in theme and style, "Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street," Tim Burton's horror-musical movie of Stephen Sondheim's masterpiece, is a brilliant work of art. Coherent and uncompromising, this smooth rendition should satisfy the purists and fans of the 1979 Tony award-winning Broadway show-—despite a number of narrative and musical changes, some of which for the better (see below).
As far as movie musicals are concerned, "Sweeney Todd" is superior to last year's "Dreamgirls" and to this year's "Hairspray"--it's the most impressive Hollywood musical to be seen since Baz Luhrmann's "Moulin Rouge" in 2001, also a visionary work; before that, you may have to go to Bob Fosse's "Cabaret," in 1972.
Newsweek
The first thing to be said about Tim Burton's "Sweeney Todd" is that it's quite faithful to Stephen Sondheim's 1979 musical while being every inch a movie. The second is that it's bloody wonderful. Emphasize bloody. The title character has a few anger-management issues. Sweeney is a revenge-obsessed Victorian London serial killer who slits the throats of his victims as they sit in his barber chair. The bodies are then dumped in the cellar, ground up and served as meat pies in the shop of Mrs. Lovett, his partner in crime. These murders, which transpired from an almost comic Brechtian distance in Hal Prince's original stage production, become something else in Burton's loving close-ups. The highly stylized blood doesn't just ooze, it spurts and sprays like water from a garden hose. All of this accompanied by some of the most beautiful, witty and disturbing songs in the musical-theater canon.
Maybe I'll get 'lucky' and find some mixed reviews next week.
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