It is amazing that a story as dark as Sweeney Todd's (in its various incarnations) has survived for more than 200 years. Its origins are uncertain, but its enduring popularity isn't. In repeated tellings, publications, stagings, old Sweeney has variously been a greedy, bloodthirsty butcher in the guise of a barber, or, in Christopher Bond's 1973 drama, a falsely imprisoned man seeking revenge on the powerful judge who wronged him.

That's the version that Stephen Sondheim crafted into a celebrated (if remarkably dark, even given the source material) musical in 1979, which originally starred Len Cariou and Angela Lansbury. "Murder, She Baked," I guess you could call it.

You could call Sweeney Todd -- Tim Burton's stylish bloodbath version -- "Murder, They Sang, and Kept on Singing." Burton's film is a visual achievement, from the lushly oppressive sets to the nearly sepia-toned cinematography, and the rich, brilliantly textured music (to say nothing of the wickedly funny, and at times winsome, lyrics) of Sondheim.

 

It's in the execution of all these elements that things don't quite gel the way I had hoped they would, even though there are breathtaking moments.

The story is fairly simple: As he arrives back in London via ship from an Australian prison colony, Benjamin Barker (Johnny Depp) relates his tragic story to a naïve shipmate, Anthony Hope (Jamie Campbell Bower) --  who made friends with Barker by saving his life. Barker, too, was once a naïve fool, but a corrupt judge named Turpin (Alan Rickman, in a fine performance) who desired Barker's young wife had Barker arrested on false charges and sentenced him to 15 years of hard labor. Barker will no longer be called Barker, he corrects young Hope; he is now Sweeney Todd, a man with a purpose. What that purpose is becomes clear in short order.

He finds his way to Mrs. Lovett's meat pie shop, where he is regaled by Mrs. Lovett herself (Helena Bonham Carter) as she describes her disgusting baked goods in loving detail. Burton has plenty of fun with this; we get lots of creepy-crawlies in the flower, in the filling, and everywhere else. But she has room upstairs for this barber to hang out his shingle, which he does, with designs on using his "friends" (straight razors) to seek revenge upon the judge. A widow, Mrs. Lovett is obviously glad for the company, even in so dark a form, and it doesn't take long for her heart to yearn for him.

As with so many plans of vengeance, things don't go as planned: Pirelli (Sacha Baron Cohen of Ali G/Borat fame, in a surprisingly straightforward performance), a charlatan barber selling snake oil, is shown up by Todd during one of Pirelli's midway pitches, only to come around later for a bit of payback. He'll do the paying himself, of course, and Todd lets the air out of Pirelli in a nifty bit of choreographed brutality. What to do with the body? Well, Mrs. Lovett sells meat pies, remember? The duet Carter and Depp share ("A Little Priest") where they hit upon their new idea for a joint enterprise is one of the film's highlights of gallows humor and sheer musicality. From there, though, Sweeney Todd leaves the humor behind and goes straight for the gallows, pausing for a poignant moment or two in which Mrs. Lovett imagines aloud that another life is possible, now that her meat pies are raging popular and Mr. T (as she calls him, and I do pity the fool in need of a trim) has all the business he can handle. Todd's trapdoor empties into the meat grinder, of course, and -- well, I'll stop there. Burton doesn't, although I'm grateful he didn't take it even farther down the Grand Guignol pit.

Sondheim's music isn't exactly hook-laden, and for that reason won't have too many people who don't already know the musical humming their way out of the theater. But it is gorgeous, perfectly attuned to the story. Indeed, it's the music that's really the star here; Depp can't really sing this material with verve, and Carter isn't a whole lot better, although they manage to get Sondheim's lyrics across plainly enough.

In spite of those limitations, there are some marvelous musical moments throughout. The duet between Carter and young Toby (Ed Sanders), the shop assistant who once belonged to Pirelli, on "Not While I'm Around" twists sweetly around its clever lyrics. The musical highlight is the aching duet between the smitten Hope and Judge Turpin's ward/Barker's daughter, Johanna (Jayne Wisener), on the song that bears her character's name.

But boy, oh boy, is there a lot of unleavened gore, something likely to scare many musical lovers off (even lovers of this particular musical). And well it should. In fact, I'm compelled to say that how much you'll enjoy this film depends to a large extent on how much bloodshed you can stand in a movie. It's not just the volume; it's the killing itself, which Burton does not shy away from. Even as Depp wrestles with Sondheim's beautiful music, he slashes throats with a flourish -- and Burton is happy to show every second of it, including the cartoonish roaring fonts of blood more typical of 1970s samurai epics.

Add to that the blistering misanthropy of Sondheim's lyrics, which in production designer Dante Ferretti's view of London, is a couple of notches past utterly bleak. Burton plays down the comedy in Sondheim's music so completely that the film seems to plod at too many points where it needs to pick up the tone just a tick or two; he got the "gallows" right, but missed the "humor" part of the equation.

Credit Burton with having the stones to bring this to the big screen; it's hard to imagine any other director getting underneath the dark tones of Sondheim's creation. As demented and weirdly beautiful as Sweeney Todd is, it somehow falls flat when it should soar. As a result, the film never hits the wickedly giddy heights the music suggests so emphatically, and dwells a little too long on the gore; it's too much a horror movie, and not enough a musical. And no one is more surprised to be complaining about that than a horror movie lover.
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