first 3rd - C
2nd 3rd - B
final 3rd - B+

On the whole, B

Got tired of the singing and the story turned out how i expected it to. not a big fan of the tone of colors it was filmed in.

A flawless film. Tim Burton has created a thrilling, exciting and visually stunning masterpiece that does justice to the fantastic source material. Oscar-worthy turns from Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter add to the film's endless appeal. I couldn't take my eyes off the screen. My second favorite musical ever after Moulin Rouge!, and easily one of the best films I've seen so far this decade.

A+

B
It started out kinda rough, but improved throughout the movie. Depp wasn't anything special, Helena Bonham Carter was a great treat as usual, and Sacha Baron Cohen was incredible in his in small role (and I'm not really a fan). Of course the music and lyrics were brilliant, it's freaking Sondheim, but I really felt the direction was lacking. I don't understand why Burton's supposed to get a nom for this, he's done so much better before. Also, the opening credits were ripped from Willy Wonka, but with blood flowing instead of chocolate. Aren't you supposed to be some creative genious, Mr.Burton?
Also, a lot of Sondheim's brilliant wordplay was lost in the movie, as the characters all sang very quickly in British accents, so if you want to get the most out of the movie, listen up really hard. Another thing....Burton cut "The Ballad of Sweeney Todd"....the best part of the musical...I don't know what was going through his head.
Overall, enjoyable (especially the last half), but very flawed. The "Epiphany" number was executed perfectly though, thanks to Helena.

A. It did start out a little shaky, but shed that as soon it got into the shake of things. All the actors were fantastic especially Depp and Carter. It's very entertaining, deliciously bloody and I loved, LOVED the music and singing.

I shall stress that I am not a fan of musicals. In fact I have held on to a long lasting hatred for them. I shall also stress that I am not a fan of Burton. In fact I have held on to a long lasting hatred for 3/4ths of his movies. I tell you this as a way to make my upcoming opinion of the movie seem incredibly important and the be all end all of opinions on the matter at hand.

Sweeney Todd is brutal, and I love it.

The hang up with musicals for me has been that I just don't care for the music. Too upbeat maybe. Right from the offset of this movie I could feel a change in the wind. The opening credits comes out with pipe organs blaring a fantastic score as the camera follows a trail of blood as it finds it way down walls and across floor boards. A visually arresting sequence, but the music is what made it great. Maybe a darker tone is exactly what was needed. And damned if the tone isn't dark.

The music is fantastic all the way through, though it's not all dark. There are some light songs added to the mix, with humor added to the mix of the songs which were added to the mix. Not all of the songs can reach levels of absolute greatness, but when they do the notes hit high. There are enough great songs on the soundtrack to counter any of the ones that may not be as thrilling, which turned out to be very important, seeing as most of the movie is singing.

There's quite a bit of dark humor in the movie, all of which works quite well, even contributing to a couple of laugh out loud moments (and some in which you will laugh while saying to yourself "That's awful!" because of out dark it is). There is a great mixture between the dark humor and the straight up drama of the movie, neither really detracting from the other.

What worried me most about this movie going into was the kid. That damned kid! I didn't want to listen to kidz bop! I thought for sure I would hate every minute of his screen time. I did not, however. He sang fine enough and by the end of the movie I actually loved his character. Everyone did a fine job portraying their characters, being most impressed with Carter's and Cohen's performances when all was said and done.

The movie is well done on every level. It was amusing and depressing combined with thrilling musical numbers. Sweeney Todd is simply one of the best movies of the year. I went in a skeptic and came out a believer.

****

BJs Grade:

A-

outstanding musical.

Great acting: check
Great songs: check
Great art direction: check
Great gore: double check

A

I didnt like it much at all. Depp is good, often great. The rest of the acting is fine, except Sacha Baron Cohen who just about steals the film. The first half of his introduction is easily the best the film gets. It looks good, during the few times they left any color in the images (the beach stuff is awesome). And the score is really cool.

Everything else is kinda lame. There aren't any good songs, really, certainly nothing memorable. The "story" isn't special, and a lot of it is just boring. It seems like it was a musical for musical's sake, like they werent singing "songs" that are supposed to stand above everything else, they're just kinda mumbling their dialog to some tune or something. And there's just no heart, or passion. It's ankle deep, if that. I kept thinking "Who gives a fuck?" I wanted to be moved, I wanted to /feel/ something underneath all this gothy, glitzy costuming, but instead everything just sat in front of me, lifeless and dull as the visuals.

Every year, there are usually one or two films that really come out and take me by surprise. I never in a million years expected to really love Sweeney Todd, as I was never a fan of the source material, granted I haven't seen the Broadway show in a few years. I went in with incredibly low expectations. As I sat down in the theater, I never expected that in a few short hours (and boy did these two hours fly by) that I would have seen a masterpiece and the best musical of all time. Tim Burton's direction here is absolutely perfect and he deserves the Best Director Oscar this year. If he doesn't win, it's an absolute travesty. Every shot was phenomenal and was like looking at a picture. The acting... everybody here was in top form. Johnny Depp made an excellent Sweeney Todd and he deserves to win Best Actor come February. There is no reason at all that it shouldn't win. He was fantastic, and his voice was perfect for the part. I was in awe watching him. As great as he is though, I say the person that surprised me the most was Helena Bonham Carter who was extraordinary as Mrs. Lovett. She deserves to win Best Actress hands down. Her performance was at times gut-wrenching (near the end) and at times incredibly funny. Alan Rickman is great as the bad guy here, though not as great as the majority of the cast. New comers Jayne Wisener, Jamie Campbell Bower and Ed Sanders were both fantastic as well, the latter being incredibly underrated and deserves and Oscar nomination or some kind of recognition, and he won't get it. I didn't find one fault in this movie. It is perfect in every way. I sometimes award movies a perfect rating even if they aren't "perfect" but I love them so much I over look some of their flaws. This film has none, and hopefully because of that it will sweep the Oscars because it deserves to. This is my favorite film-musical and one of my favorite movies of all time. I'm so happy I took a chance a saw it. It was absolutely phenomenal. I urge everyone to check it out. You won't be disappointed.

10/10 (A+)

I'm far too tired to post my full thoughts now, but let me say this is probably the most disappointing film of the year for me.

Burton has done so much better in the past, what was he thinking? Really. C+ just because of Depp, otherwise this is bordering on C- territory.

Oh and anyone who gives it an A+ is fooling themselves.

Sure thing.

There is no reason to "fool myself" into liking this because I didn't at ALL expect to give it more than a 7/10 ( B ).

So... SUCCESS?

In my pants

All right, here it goes. I just woke up but I'll sum up my thoughts as best as possible.

As a huge Tim Burton fan I was immensely disappointed. Now, he's not a man who does no wrong, I wasn't a huge fan of Planet of the Apes (good vision, bad execution), and I thought Mars Attacks! was a little over the top even for him.

At any rate, his last several films have been excellent masterpieces. Corpse Bride was fantastic, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was a worthy adaptation of the source material and Sleep Hollow was simply superb. Even Big Fish makes it into my all-time top 100 (though his best work, Edward Scissorhands places into my top 10).

So now, into the film (which I might add was my #1 most anticipated film for the holiday season). I'll admit I was not familiar with the original Broadway production, other than knowing what I knew from the trailer and a few small snippets I read here and there. I trusted Burton would make a great adaptation and so I went in pretty much blind to it.

As was customary for a Tim Burton film, it was really dark. Usually it works (see the aforementioned Sleepy Hollow or Edward Scissorhands), this time, not quite so well. While I can appreciate the use of color grading to get a more emotional feel to it, the extreme dark in this film just gave me a headache. Perhaps Burton should have opted for a slightly lighter shade of gray, or maybe even a brown, rather than the dark grade that caused me to have to squint to see some of what happened, thus leaving me with a headache at the end (though some of that may have been from the girls I went with digging their rings into my hand since neither of them could bear to watch the film towards the end). I just felt that this was definitely not Burton in top form. Sure the sets were great, but there was something missing. His usual macabre humor was mostly absent. It felt as dead as Sweeny's heart. It felt as dead as Sacha Baron Cohen's character (the second time around) -- which by the way was a great albeit somewhat silly cameo.

I guess my biggest problem actually comes with Sondheim's lyrics. While they likely work in Broadway, for the scope of the film, it just didn't work. With the grandness of the sets (versus a small Broadway stage), I felt they were just too narrow for the scope of the film, which is not intrinsically a problem with the film but rather with adapting such a stage play to film.

At any rate. As I said, I went into the film blind. Sure, I knew bits and pieces about the story, but the whole cannibalism angle kind of escaped me until a bit midway through the song where they discuss it (at which point I promptly nearly threw up). Yeah, I don't do well with cannibal-esque movies, and this is certainly one that made my stomach turn sour.

There were also of course so many plot holes. Just to name a few: nobody noticed the people he killed? Surely somebody would have suspected something, I mean. Oh yeah and the toe that the kid found in the pie, that was the first one? Seriously? After all the meat pies they sold, they managed to let just one toe slip through and it happened to simply be in the one pie that he decided to eat? Yeah. Ok then.

I guess I was just to excited about the movie. I expected another Burton masterpiece, what I got was sub-par, gross and ... just not my cup of tea.

Oh yeah and for the performances, Depp was phenomenal, Bonham-Carter was superb as always, and Baran Cohen kind of sucked.

On consideration I'll give it a B-.

I've been lurking. I don't have time much to post here anymore, been too busy with work and school. When you coming back down here?

Sorry. I really wanted to like it. I was so excited. I never go to movies opening weekend anymore (just no time!) but I arranged my schedule just for this film...

As far as I can see you haven't graded it yet, Loyal... where do you stand on it?

It wasn't until the last month or so that I expected anything from this. Burton's name has indicated trouble for more than a decade now.

Well, what a great fucking movie! They are working with an undisputed classic American musical, but how difficult a transition this is. The filmmakers didn't shy away from the operetta nature of the show, they didn't soften anything. And unlike the last 11 years of Burton's filmmography, this doesn't feel like made by an old man whose lost touch with his muse. This is the Tim Burton we've been missing since Ed Wood.

All the non-Todd/Lovett roles got pretty much sliced out of this thing, which is ok. What a beautiful job they did of keeping the score and spirit of the show alive while making the necessary trims to make the best movie possible.

Encore, encore!

I want to add that the audience snickered when Baron Cohen's name came on, as well as during his first appearance. Lots of "Borat!" could be heard. An ignominious fate for a chameleon as talented as he is.

Mine was decidedly not arty farty. But at least they definitely knew it was a musical!

Cohen steals every scene he was in, I was sad to see him die so early.

God, that's good!!!


(it really was)

It's very well-made technically and does many things right, but the whole thing did feel a bit cold and stagnant to me. I was just never really drawn in like I have been with great recent musicals (Chicago, Dreamgirls, even Hairspray, etc.). Maybe I'm just strange, but the movie sort of felt like it lacked energy much of the time, even despite the massive amounts of bloodletting and singing going on. Stephen Sondheim's music is good, but not really entirely memorable, especially in this context. Part of this might have to do with Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter's singing; although both actors should be commended for singing, their vocals aren't exactly top-notch, especially Bonham Carter. I don't mean to sound too harsh on the movie, because I liked it. The movie has a macabre sense of humor and the whole thing looks gorgeous. On the acting front, Johnny Depp is so subdued at times that he threatens to fade into the background, which is a bit disappointing. However, Helena Bonham Carter gives a very enjoyable performance as Mrs. Lovett, and Alan Rickman and Timothy Spall are suitably menacing as villains. Sweeney Todd is a solid production overall, but is a bit of a disappointment in drawing this viewer in. B