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

Love the movie, but it does not hold a candle to the original cast- Len Cariou, Angela Lansbury, Victor Garber, Dennis Quilley, etc. They just can't be topped.

The original Broadway Show

It is Sweeney Todd!

Dreadful movie! Okay, maybe not dreadful, but absolutely dreadful compared to a decent production of the stage show.

The movie has great music badly sung, but it's slow, gray, and dull. The stage show is fast-moving and very funny, until the last act anyway, and the movie captured absolutely none of the show's humor and liveliness.

R4 = Patti LuPone

In the 2001 film From Hell, Johnny Depp stars as Frederick Abberline the lead investigator in the Jack the Ripper murders. In 1971's Hands of the Ripper, Eric Porter stars as psychiatrist Dr. John Pritchard who treats the daughter of Jack the Ripper.

R4 really? I disagree, I thought the movie was fast paced and had some good humor.

R7, have you seen a decent production of the stage show?

There are plenty on youtube, if you want to make a comparison.

Love the movie more than the stage version. Gorgeous to look at and the leads are great.

The movie is currently free to watch on YouTube:

It is a fun movie!

They tried to hide the fact that it was a musical when they promoted the movie. It made for some very unhappy moviegoers.

R12 How do people not know Sweeney Todd is a musical?

I saw the Broadway version with Josh Groban and Annaleigh Ashford last month.

I thought Groban was very much miscast. He hasn't an ounce of gravitas like Len Cariou or George Hearn did. What were they thinking? Aren't there other stars who could have fit the bill?

Ashford was very 'twee and cutesy', but certainly handled the score and choreo very well. She had a few good comic moments too, so I got past my misgivings in the end.

R14 Yeah, she's no Angela Lansbury and Groban is no Cariou/Hearn. Who is the Judge? Don't he was on Dennis Quilley's level.

R15, the judge (Jamie Jackson) was fantastic. He had the right level of entitlement, creepiness and scariness. John Rapson was pretty good as Beadle too.

R16 perfect. Any with Mid-Atlantic accents?

Just Ruth Chatterton, r17.

R18 I don't think she was in Sweeney Todd

r9=Helen Keller

[quote]How do people not know Sweeney Todd is a musical?

How do people not know Trump is a conman, hypocrite, criminal, liar, thief ...

HBC stunk to high heaven in this. She can't sing and brought very little humor to the role.

She was specifically directed not to, r22.

To me, the greatest omission is the chorus.

[quote]She can't sing and brought very little humor to the role.

Oh wow. When is she next free?

Denis Quilley was not in the original cast. He sang the part of Sweeney in the London cast.

The movie had to be shortened quite a bit because Johnny Depp’s daughter became seriously ill and was hospitalized in London for awhile; production shut down temporarily. Unfortunately the chorus was cut out because of that (if I recall correctly.)

That Liliy-Rose recovered is why Depp does (or did) a lot of appearances as Captain Jack in the hospital she was in.

Did she get into his stash?

R25 I thought he was Judge Turpin in the original. Maybe a later addition. But I remember him singing Turpin with Angela and maybe Hearn as Sweeney

Toni Collett wanted & audition endlessly for the movie only to have burton’s wife get the part. I thought she would’ve been great.

r28 He played Turpin in the 1993 National Theatre revival, with Alun Armstrong and Julia McKenzie (and then took over as Todd)

I love this movie. I've also seen the filmed 1982 stage version with Angela Lansbury and of course, how are you going to top that, but I LOVE the Burton/Depp film.

The movie is terrible. Depp can't sing. Helena looks and acts like she wishes she were somewhere else. The whole movie is flat looking - weirdly blue the whole time. Typical Tim Burton dollhouse bullshit.

I happened to like Groban. He played Sweeney like a schlub - a little, beaten down man. Not the personification of vengeance. Honestly, that makes more sense. Sweeney is a small man, ground down by powers greater than him. It sort of never made sense to me that he should be this big, powerful person.

Tim Burton ALWAYS casts his significant other in his films, and for ages he cast his pal Depp in everything as well, and that was a bad, lazy habit that dragged his films down.

He was with Bonham Carter at the time so he cast her even though she couldn't sing at all, she's both lifeless in the role and hopeless with the difficult score, but hey! Having her around made him happy so what if she stunk up the screen! Seriously, Burton has gotten lazy as a director, and this film shows the decline.

Groban does a nuanced, complex Sweeney who evolves over the course of the show….and it just doesn’t work.

[quote]I've also seen the filmed 1982 stage version with Angela Lansbury and of course, how are you going to top that?

Seeing Lansbury on stage in 1979 with Cariou.

Honestly, Angie's corny Cockney accent is borderline incomprehensible. Believe it or not, Emma Thompson was amazing as Mrs. Lovett. Maria Friedman (who's production of MERRILY is breaking box office records right now) also does a great job.