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Saturday, December 29, 2007

Movie

'Sweeney Todd'

Sweeney Todd has everything—rape, murder, cannibalism, more murder—and whoever decided to open it around the holidays is a marketing genius. Tim Burton's film of Stephen Sondheim's Broadway musical is by no means perfect; Helena Bonham Carter can't sing, for starters. But you couldn't ask for a better antidote to compulsory holiday cheer than Burton's nightmare vision. London is a grim and grisly grindhouse. It's hard to argue with Johnny Depp's Sweeney when he decides that the "lives of the wicked should be made brief, for the rest of us death will be a relief," or Mrs. Lovett's suggestion that they're going to "save a lot of graves, do a lot of relatives favors." (See movie times for details.)

DAN SAVAGE

RSS icon Comments

1

While I would agree that Helena Bonham Carter doesn't have the strongest voice and maybe could have used a couple more vocal lessons, at least she never really falls out of tune.

Posted by Patrick | December 29, 2007 1:44 PM
2

I loved it. Ended up seeing it twice, once with the fam and once with the girlfriend's fam.

See it in the theaters for a wonderful visceral experience.

In fact I have some of the music stuck in my head right now.

Posted by Cale | December 29, 2007 5:24 PM
3

Amazing movie. Fabulous!

Posted by Michigan Matt | December 29, 2007 5:34 PM
4

@1 that's all pitch-correction and compression-- she (and Depp to a certain extent) spend a large amount of the movie sounding like fucking T-Pain.

I loved the movie anyway, but let's not fool ourselves.

Posted by christopher hong | December 29, 2007 7:59 PM

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