The Wall Street Journal calls Tim Burton's film version of Sweeney Todd a "brilliant, blood-soaked" adaptation of the Stephen Sondheim original. The film "takes pleasure in its own theatricality, gives pleasure with caustic wit, trusts the power of Stephen Sondheim's score and exults in flights of fancy that only a movie can provide ... Like Sweeney with his razor, Tim Burton's movie grabs you and won't let go."
The Wall Street Journal calls Tim Burton's film version of Sweeney Todd a "brilliant, blood-soaked" adaptation of the Stephen Sondheim original. The filmmaker and his creative team, writes Joe Morgenstern, "have turned the darkly comical Broadway musical into an elegant horror film, starring Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter, that takes pleasure in its own theatricality, gives pleasure with caustic wit, trusts the power of Stephen Sondheim's score and exults in flights of fancy that only a movie can provide."
As for the demon barber himself, Morgenstern says:
Johnny Depp's performance defines the title role for a new generation. Is there another contemporary actor who could have summoned up so much malevolence in such blithely minimalist style? ... [H]e succeeds at the improbable but essential task of making his tortured slaughterer sympathetic.
And Depp isn't the only one in fine form. "The rest of the cast is no less expert, or enjoyable," Morgenstern reports.
"But then," he says, "this film is of an artistic piece ... Like Sweeney with his razor, Tim Burton's movie grabs you and won't let go."
To read the full review, visit online.wsj.com.
