I am now one of those people who goes to the movies on Christmas day, kill me now. Actually, the screening was pretty full, but I guess because it was the late show people were done with their family dinners and whatnot.
I will concede that while I was looking forward to this film, being a fan of both Johnny Depp and Tim Burton (alone or together, doesn’t matter), I wasn’t super obsessed with it or had unrealistically high expectations of it. I’ve never seen the play, so I’m not coming at this from the point of view of someone who is so in love with the source material that any adaptation for the silver screen will make me twitch with irritation at what might have been left out or what might have been interpreted in ways that I wasn’t used to. Despite all this, I still come away from this movie with a bad taste in my mouth for reasons I haven’t yet been able to pinpoint.
This is one of these movies where it’s comprised of excellent individual parts but when it comes time to adding up to something greater than the sum of those parts, it actually adds up to something less than the sum of those parts. I never know quite what to make of this when I encounter it. You’ve got Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter, both of whom are excellent as Sweeny Todd and Mrs. Lovett. You’ve got Tim Burton helming the project, which automatically lenses the film with his brand of weirdo darkness. You’ve got a ridiculously awesome, sick, and twisted story to work from that should provide really great bones for the film. You’ve got Dante Ferretti, my favourite production designer, making sure that everything looks super freaking awesome. And yet despite the story being ghoulish and ghastly, despite Johnny Depp being so completely perfect for the role under Burton’s direction, despite the obvious effort and skill put in turning 19th century London into a stylized, putrid place that almost becomes an additional character, it never comes together.
There’s a big gaping hole in it somewhere and I’m not sure where. I’m never overly concerned about what gets taken out and what gets left in from the source material so long as the content of the film makes sense as a film in and of itself (which is why I’m not all that bothered about the Harry Potter adaptations, since I think they stand alone as movies perfectly fine). But I feel like there’s something missing here that exists in the play that never made it into the film, whether it be a plot point that makes it more cohesive or something about the way the tone of the play got converted (misconverted?) into the tone of the film. There’s just something missing and I don’t know what it is!
Is the original play funny? Because I feel like this movie was missing the funny in spades where funny could have existed. There were a couple of chuckles in assorted places early in the film, but the only scene that was pretty hysterical was when Mrs. Lovett is daydreaming about all the lovey dovey trips she and Mr. T could go on. Everything about that sequence was fantastic because the humour was conveyed in a bunch of different ways — i.e. through the acting and the song itself, obviously, but also through the way the scene itself was filmed and the colour palette choices that were made — rather than staying pretty one dimensional the way it was in other parts. The subject matter is just so serious (despite also being completely absurd and horrific) that I think a little bit of an injection of humour really could have underscored the story in a really fun and dynamic way.
Also, can I just say I’m really bored of Alan Rickman? Seriously. The guy is totally just phoning it in now, he’s not even trying.