DVD Traffic Report: April 1, 2024

Tim Burton may not seem like the ideal adapter of a Stephen Sondheim musical, but when you consider the wry ghoulishness of this throat-slashing tragedy, the aptness of Burton’s dark flamboyance is clear. With input from Sondheim himself, Sweeney Todd has been smartly and ruthlessly condensed to fit a two-hour template — some songs cut entirely, several more liberally pruned — without completely gutting the original musical. Burton’s re-conception of the material is where the bigger changes have taken place. The casting of Johnny Depp, performing a brooding character study that shaves the comic surface from his famous pirate Jack Sparrow, is a stroke (turns out he can sing, too!), but Helena Bonham Carter, in strung-out goth mode, is never quite able to nail down her character (or maybe it's just difficult to imagine such an anti-Angela Lansbury in the role). Alan Rickman and the rubber-faced Timothy Spall can play comic adversaries in their sleep, and the anatomically enhanced Sacha Baron Cohen steals each scene he appears in as the barber Pirelli. The bloodletting is copious and graphic, but executed with a theatrical flair that softens the grisliness. Finally, Burton’s vision of the aspirationally romantic “By the Sea” is a riot — a perfect mini-movie with a stone-faced Depp channeling Buster Keaton. It’s a terrific musical in an uncommonly good year for movie musicals. (A version of this review originally appeared in the White Plains Times.)

Buy it from Amazon.com: Sweeney Todd - The Demon Barber of Fleet Street or Sweeney Todd - The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (Two-Disc Special Collector's Edition)