Stealth Entertainment: Sweeney Todd

By Scott Lumley

November 20, 2008

If I do this, Chris Hansen will be all over me.

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Hollywood is a machine. Every week, every month and every year countless films are released into theatres and not every one is as successful as the studio heads would hope. Sometimes the publicity machine was askew, sometimes the movie targeted an odd demographic, sometimes the release was steamrolled by a much larger movie and occasionally the movie is flat out bad.

But Hollywood's loss is our gain. There is a veritable treasure trove of film out there that you may not have seen. I will be your guide to this veritable wilderness of unwatched film. It will be my job to steer you towards the action, adventure, drama and comedy that may have eluded you, and at the same time, steer you away from some truly unwatchable dreck.

Hopefully we'll stumble across some entertainment that may have slid under your radar. Wish us luck.

Sweeney Todd: The Demon barber of Fleet Street (2007)

As a disclaimer, I need to state a few things off the bat.

1) I don't like horror films. At all. There are of course the odd exceptions, like Silence of the Lambs, Henry, or Hellraiser. These are movies that are so stylishly done or completely original that they knocks my socks off. However, the majority of horror films are cinematic garbage to me. They celebrate our basest, most evil desires and add little to humanity as a whole. I know that there are veritable LEGIONS of horror film fans out there who strongly disagree with me, but I don't care. As far as I'm concerned, pornography probably adds more to the human condition than horror films ever will.

2) As much as I detest horror films, I can only but hold them in high regard when compared to musicals. Hairspray bored me, you couldn't pay me to watch High School Musical and Mamma Mia! will never, EVER see playing time in my house. The whole concept of a musical is ridiculous to me. People wandering the streets don't just randomly burst into well-choreographed song and dance routines. I find the concept of Spider-Man far more probable than a group of random people with little to no foreknowledge of each other bursting into song as they dance an intricate routine that would take a seasoned and trained dance professional three weeks to get down cold.




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And after saying that, I have to take the absolute opposite approach and say that Sweeney Todd, a horror musical no less, is a truly original and highly watchable film. Nothing in this movie feels forced. It's a superbly cast, brilliantly filmed period piece about a wronged man who returns to his lost life and home and proceeds to set himself on a path of vengeance as opposed to trying to rebuild his shattered life. If there is a wrong decision to make here, he makes it.

The film stars Johnny Depp as Sweeney Todd, Helena Bonham Carter as Mrs. Lovett, Alan Rickman as Judge Turpin, Timothy Spall as Beadle, the chameleon like Sacha Baron Cohen as Pirelli and the surprisingly talented Ed Sanders as young Toby. This is some pretty good casting, with some very talented actors who are more interested in their craft than box office.


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