Although I found the music in this utterly unmemorable I liked everything else about it. Even Sacha Baron Cohen, who I usually find annoying, did a good job with his role. Great atmosphere and the two leads had the courage to play their parts to the max, leaving us with no sympathy for them by the end. No overacting either. This movie continues the trend in strange hairstyles with Depp's styling. Surely a barber should sport a better coiffure. A-.
6 comments:
I'm looking forward to seeing this, but it always struck me as an adaptation that could have been done without the music.
I think so. It just didn't bring much to it. It's between opera and pop and doesn't sit there easily. I know Sondheim is considered a genius but...certainly no humable songs.
Indeed, Sondheim's music tends to be more Art than Pop (the closest thing to a pop song hit he's had, iirc, is the title song to A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO THE FORUM--"Tragedy tomorrow/Comedy tonight!"). He's the anti-Webber, thank goodness. I like it, but haven't seen any productions of his SWEENEY TODD in toto yet, just a big chunk of the PBS staging some years back. The story of ST has been done "straight," so to speak, in various films (and other media), most famously in the 1936 film starring "Tod Slaughter" (my wrasslin' name). 1970 and 1971 also saw non-musical films.
My husband saw it on a school trip with my son's French Club in the mid-eighties and remembered the music as more compelling than in this version. Perhaps conviction was lacking in Depp et al.
Yes, the cast in the film aren't singers, primarily, and couldn't "sell" the songs the same way a primarily singing cast would.
They could carry but not sell the songs.
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