Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street

If Sweeney Todd startles moviegoers today the way it did theatergoers in the '70s, it'll be less for Burton's extravagantly stylized bloodletting than for the fact that the story is — unlike most movie musicals — told almost entirely through song. And not just any songs, mind you, but Sondheim's brilliantly dissonant libretto, where burlesque ditties about cockney resourcefulness go hand in hand with arias of loneliness, despair and blood lust. That music has been superbly reorchestrated for the film by one longtime Sondheim collaborator, Jonathan Tunick, and performed by a 64-piece orchestra under the direction of another, Paul Gemignani. And as for the singing? It's neither brilliant nor blasphemous. Sondheim has always maintained that he prefers actors who sing to singers who act, which is what he's gotten here in Depp (who occasionally sounds like an emo rocker when he strains to hit a difficult note) and Carter (who has the most difficult songs, and swallows some lyrics as though they were bits of Mrs. Lovett's fresh hot pies).

No matter how hard Hollywood tries, it's folly to think that a second Golden Age of the American film musical is ever going to materialize. Broadway has turned to scavenging Hollywood for ideas, while even the fearless Sondheim has segued into semiretirement. So the existence of Sweeney Todd seems all the more cause for celebration — a macabre holiday treat that not everyone in the family is sure to enjoy.

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street