Attend the tale, but wait till it comes out on DVD

Well, and so I've now seen Burton's Sweeney Todd. And it's not bad, but it's not great, either.

I was very impressed by Rickman as Turpin - I thought he did a great job. Cohen did a good job, too. And I didn't think that any of the actors were bad, though on the other hand I wasn't impressed by the singing abilities of either Depp or Carter. I thought "By the Sea" was very cleverly done, and by extension so was Epiphany" (though "Epiphany" seemed peculiar until it was revealed that he wasn't actually running around with a razor and being ignored by everyone). The setting was appropriately dim and dreary.

But I found the contrast between the underplayed singing and the lush score to be bit jarring, and several of the actors seemed to make a real distinction between singing and speaking, which I found to be a bit disruptive to the movie's flow. There also seemed points where the actors clearly waited for the score to catch up before
singing. I remember that in the stage production's wigmaker's sequence Sondheim included some spoken lines ("Repeat that. Repeat that!""Yes, Mr Todd.") to cover the change in key before Anthony sang in response to Sweeney, and the movie might have benefited from similar devices. Alternately, it might have been better off as a non-musical, perhaps using Sondheim's music as underscoring or background music.

So, see it, because it is a good story, but you don't need to see it in the theaters.