Deborah Ross

Drained of colour

After the cheerlessness and brutality of No Country for Old Men, I’m not sure a film about a serial killer is just what you want.

After the cheerlessness and brutality of No Country for Old Men, I’m not sure a film about a serial killer is just what you want.

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
18, nationwide

After the cheerlessness and brutality of No Country for Old Men, I’m not sure a film about a serial killer is just what you want. I may even be up to here with bloody films about bloodless people. Why not a nice film about nice people doing nice things, like crocheting for the poor? How hard can that be? True enough, Sweeney Todd is a musical, but this doesn’t exactly lighten the mood which, if you are as vigilant and smart as I am, you will spot right from the beginning when slicks of scarlet blood ooze from the opening credits. Hello, Dolly! Now that was a nice musical. Why don’t people make films like Hello, Dolly! any more? How hard can it be?

This is a Tim Burton film adapted from the Stephen Sondheim stage show, and it’s typical Burton, I guess. With a Burton film it is never style over substance because it is always style as substance, which sounds like an insult, but truly isn’t. Everything Burton (now, there’s a man who needs a barber…) wants to say he tries to say with the very look of his films which, if anything, makes his films particularly worth looking at. However, this isn’t to say he always pulls it off. He doesn’t. And he doesn’t here. I know, I know, Sweeney has already received rave reviews everywhere else, pretty much, but who are you going to believe? Them, or me? And remember: I know where you live.

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