Forget the ploy of opening the “Alien vs. Predator” sequel on Christmas Day.
Turns out Tim Burton, his muse Johnny Depp and companion Helena Bonham Carter deliver the most ingenious counter to the season’s cheer.
No sentiment goes unbloodied in the director’s exuberantly dark “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street,” based on Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler’s Tony-winning musical.
And the tale of a barber who slits the throats of his clients, then sends their bodies tumbling down a chute to be ground and baked into meat pies begins in a London black as a lump of coal.
All the cliches about revenge — that it is sweet, that it is best served cold — are dumped on their heads as Sweeney Todd (Depp) returns to London to exact revenge from the man who robbed him of his wife and child and sent him to a penal colony years earlier.
***1/2 RATING | Musical Mayhem
Loving family man Benjamin Barker is no more.
In his stead arrives Todd, on a ship straight out of a different Depp vehicle. (“Sweeney” cinematographer Dariusz Wolkski shot all three “Pirates.”)
The opening credits are Gorey — as in Edward, the gothic-style illustrator. Faint drops of blood mingle with a driving rain. More sanguine fluids grease the gears of a devilish machine.
This Grand Guignol-loving musical moves with verve onto other types of gore. Splatter and red mists are in ample supply once Todd gets into the swing of things.
“At last my arm is complete, again,” he says, reunited with his razors. Depp stands tall, his arm extended. (Need we say, Todd is no Edward Scissorhands).
The buckets of blood suggest violence that’s more Roger Corman than David Cronenberg, more B-movie than documentary. Even so, “Sweeney Todd” is rated R, and the intensifying rhythm of the kills has you either looking away or pondering how different the violence would be underneath a proscenium arch.
Bonham Carter is dear, pathetic and repugnant as love-sicko Mrs. Lovett. When she sings the yearning “By the Sea,” Burton places her and beloved “Mr. T” within a bright-hued fantasyscape that is as ridiculously chipper as London is relentlessly grim.
Alan Rickman takes seriously the nasty work of Judge Turpin. A moral hypocrite of the first order, the Judge raped Todd’s wife. Then he took the Barkers’ baby Johanna, first as stepdaughter, then — he plots — as more.
“What man hasn’t done something to merit a hanging,” he says to his lackey, Beadle (Timothy Spall). He should know.
Bringing down the upper register of Todd’s songs helps Depp hold his own while singing, whispering and sneering the challenging role. The actor is determined that we never let the mass killer off the hook because of his former self’s unfathomable losses.
Time and again, Burton makes keen use of camera movement and cuts to underscore the uneasy beauty at the heart of Sondheim’s music.
Duets and reprises aren’t the festive fare of other musicals. A weave of vocals and instrumentation revels in fundamental discord. Young lover Anthony’s pining ballad, “Johanna,” is followed soon enough by the Judge’s version, which elicits a big “ick.”
What could be a sicker pleasure than having Todd’s and Judge Turpin’s voices meet, then bleed into each other on the prettified song “Pretty Women”?
For my money, the most humane moment in “Sweeney Todd” comes as Toby (newcomer Edward Sanders) promises to protect Mrs. Lovett. The urchin has lost his bombastic patron Pirelli (a wickedly agile Sacha Baron Cohen) early on and has become Lovett’s ward.
“Not While I’m Around” is a moving profession of fidelity. And the scene is shot in a soft sepia, very different from the film’s other palettes.
Still, with all that’s gone before, you’d have to be a sucker wearing your heart on your sleeve to imagine Toby’s lilting notes the final word.
Heart, sleeve, arm, meat grinder.
“Sweeney Todd”
R for graphic bloody violence. 1 hour, 57 minutes. Directed by Tim Burton. Written by John Logan. Music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim. Book by Hugh Wheeler. Photography by Dariusz Wolski. Starring Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter, Alan Rickman, Timothy Spall, Sacha Baron Cohen, Jamie Campbell Bower, Jayne Wisener and Edward Sanders. Opens today at area theaters.
Film critic Lisa Kennedy: 303-954-1567 or lkennedy@denverpost.com. Also on blogs.denverpostcom/madmoviegoer
