Sweeney Todd – Yawn?

This musical was fabulous. Johnny did a fantastic job. If you understood the musical, the symbolism, and the beautiful music………….then you would have enjoyed it. Open your mind and concentrate………….you’ll get it.

The problem wasn’t the musical itself, nor the music. It WAS the actors, and the adaptation. The stage musical itself is something like 2 and a half hours long, so you can imagine how much was cut out of the movie. Now, the actors all acted very well, but for the most part, none of them are singers. The score for Sweeney Todd is one of the hardest musical scores out there, and the part of Sweeney himself is one of the (if not the)hardest Baritone parts of ANY musical.

But Johnny Depp is no trained singer, he’s just an amateur, who managed to mess up “Epiphany.” THAT is one of the more chilling numbers in any good stage production of the show, but throughout half of the song in the movie Depp just sounded like he was singing to sing it, with little understanding for the feeling of the character. This isn’t a song where Sweeney is just “mad,” as Deep portrays him. Sweeney literally goes insane during this number. And Depp’s voice was not strong enough. It is a little more effective on stage, because during the “Who sir? You sir? no one’s in the chair, come on!” parts, Sweeney actually faces out into the audience brandishing his razors at actual audience members, screaming at the top of his lungs.

Almost the entire movie cast sang every song with a very laid-back attitude, which was…not right. For “The worst pies in London,” Mrs. Lovett’s part is supposed to sound very choppy and staccato, reflecting on Mrs. Lovett’s very low class English accent. But Helena Bonham Carter just made it sound…so… pretty. Which is not a good thing. While singing it was hard to tell if she was supposed to be low class or not, and she connected phrases that had no business being connected.

The one song that I felt lived up to it’s stage counterpart was Anthony’s song “Johanna,” which he sings to her from the street. THAT was probably the best vocal performance in the whole movie.

Many entire songs were cut from the movie, including the prologue and epilogue songs (alluded to in the music, but never actually sung). Those songs set the mood of the entire show, and instead we got this ridiculous (but admittedly visually stunning) tour of London with CG blood floating everywhere. Go look up “The Ballad of Sweeney Todd” on youtube. It’s how it was supposed to start.

I will agree with Cynthia’s criticism that that sections where two people were singing different parts at the same time were practically failures. However Cynthia’s assumption that it is because the musical is poorly written show nothing but a complete ignorance of the score. One of the main reasons those sections are hard to follow in the movie are because parts which really should have been designated as backup where just as loud as the lead part (such as the Judge’s parts in ‘Pretty Women.’).

By the way, “pirelli’s miracle elixir” is supposed to be much longer, and the crowd, in three groups, also sing, giving us Tobias singing against 3 groups of the crowd, singing against Sweeney and Lovett. The scene where Mrs. Lovett is feeding the human pies to people is supposed to have interjections from the customers declaring how delicious the pies are. Those were all cut out from the movie.

One of the best pieces of music that was cut from the movie was a song called “Kiss me.” In it, Anthony and Johanna are alone, him thinking up their escape plan, while her getting paranoid about the judge coming home early. The parts are even more different than any other such parts in the movie, and they work together seamlessly, as long as the actors have strong enough voices (The woman who played Johanna in the DVD recording did a HORRIBLE job on this song).
After Kiss me, there is a reprise of it, only this time, the Judge and the Beadle join in, with the Beadle informing the Judge of Sweeney Todd’s establishment. So now we have FOUR people all singing their own parts. And if done right, it sounds fantastic.

For example, this is a decent example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4PnkVuE62A (after the pause for dialogue, it picks up again at 3:54 or so, though there is a little bit of singing before it)

For obvious reasons, this would have been hard to have included in the movie. But it’s an example of the genius of the musical score. When the score is performed well, the show IS interesting. And very climactic.

The problem with the movie is not that it’s a “bad musical.” In fact the original production won 8 Tonys, including Best Musical, Best Score, Best Book, Best Actor and Best Actress. The problem with the movie is that while they chose actors whose voices complemented each others in a passable way, they did not do the brilliant score justice.

Thank you for taking the time to respond to my very late comment, lol. I guess it’s a personal matter of taste. I always had a taste for darker things, so the idea of a musical about a serial killer appealed to me from the beginning (I was familiar with the play long before the movie was even announced).

If you don’t like it, that completely up to you, I just want to take the time to note that while the movie is a good way of introducing people to the musical, it is by no means a “good” representation of it. Listening to a few tracks from the Original Broadway cast would immediately prove my point.

Another thing about the movie was that in the play, Sweeney and Lovett are supposed to look much older, with Anthony and Johanna being around 16-18, and Tobias himself probably around 12, maybe older. Since Carter and Depp looked relatively young, they had to make all of the other characters younger.

In any case, there really are several things that contribute to a “good” musical; and each staging is different. I recently saw the current Broadway revival of Sweeney and hated it. The singing was top notch, but the director had the “revolutionary” idea to have the actors play all their own instruments. Since some of the instruments included cellos and double bases, or pecussion instruments, this means the current production has little to no blocking, and no changes of scenery. They pretty much just sit on stage and sing/act.

As I said, the DVD recording features a Johanna that has no business singing: (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uf91-elvzg8&feature=related) compare that to the other video I linked to, lol.

I can completely understand what you all mean when you say no songs stand out. I’m used to it, because the composer, Stephen Sondheim, has written many award winning musicals, many of which have very few songs that people would know. He wrote lyrics for West Side Story, but his own compositions include A funny thing happened on the way to the forum, A little Night Music and Into the Woods. The most famous of his songs is probably “Send in the Clowns,” which in my opinion is far from the “best” or most complex song in A little Night Music (the play it comes from). Into the Woods on the other hand, really does have very little that stands out, despite the musical complexity and a few good solo songs (that is, there are no real showstoppers).

It’s just that, as someone who sang choral music for over 6 years, I appreciate complexity and see just how hard some of the Sweeney songs can be, and there’s no option for me but to admire people who can pull them off. Most of the songs in the play are written in D Flat, not a very nice key. Only “Green Finch and Linnet Bird” has a ‘normal’ key signature (F).

I love almost every musical I’ve seen (Dream Girls and Sondheim’s Sunday in the Park with George being exceptions that left me lukewarm at best), including ones like Rent, or Jesus Christ Superstar that many people deride as having been “musically dumbed down for the masses.” Just saying that Sondheim’s pieces ARE very difficult, with beautiful counterpoints (The Simpsons actually made a joke about it, when Krusty thought he hired Andrew Llloyd Webber as a composer/accompanist, but realized he hired Stephen Sondheim when the music came out too complex with counterpoints, and asked Sondheim to dumb the music down, lol)

Sometimes, the complexity of the music does little for people, because a complex or beautiful song is not necessarily memorable or catchy (Most of the songs in A little Night Music are beautifully difficult, but forgettable unless you like the show enough to learn them).

Sondheim is a brilliant Composer, and definitely my favorite musical composer, but he’s not for everyone [shrug].

God, the movie sucks, it’s inferior compared to the 1970/80’s original musical. The best pairing would be George Hearne and Angela Lansbury.

Johnny Depp was above average but still not as good nor deep as Hearne’s Sweeny. And Helena Boneham Carter was dreadful as Mrs. Lovett who was written to be slightly sadistic, Helena made her into a deranged emo goth chick. And as Mark said, song was utterly butchered, an important aspect of getting the feel of the dark humour and feelings of the two protaganists. Plus, Sweeny is supposed to be Baritone and Mrs. Lovett is Mezzo-Soprano. Johnny sung in something like Tenor while Helena was amateur Soprano? What we got from the film was two emotionless psychopaths.