What Do The Critics Say?

"A fantastically haunting tale, a nightmare musical that's gripping from the first minor chord on the organ to the bloody, inevitable resolution." Eric D Snider EricDSnider.com "It is rare for a film to achieve a feeling of unequivocal, breathtaking transcendence, but Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street does just that." Dustin Putman THE MOVIE BOY "The story is so very strong. The music is so magnificent. And with undeniable performances by Depp, Rickman, and Baron Cohen, the film really works." David Poland MOVIE CITY NEWS "Burton has done that rare thing -- turned a great play into a great film." Geoff Pevere TORONTO STAR "This killer Sweeney is thrillingly executed from start to splatter-ific finish." Matt Stephens E! ONLINE "Sweeney Todd has been my favorite stage musical for years. Now it is my favorite film of 2007." Danny Minton BEAUMONT JOURNAL "One of the most memorable films of the year. Sure, Depp is one of the screen's most bankable stars and a frequent Burton collaborator, but can he carry a tune? The answer is a resounding yes as he tackles the notoriously tricky Sondheim lyrics. For all the menace he brings to the film, he also ensures that you're having a bloody good time." John Monaghan DETROIT FREE PRESS

"Sweeney Todd is a thriller-diller from start to finish: scary, monstrously funny and melodically thrilling. And Depp is simply stupendous." Peter Travers ROLLING STONE There's something about the 1979 Stephen Sondheim musical that awakened something audacious and inspired in Burton, sparking him to make his best film since "Ed Wood." Rob Thomas CAPITAL TIMES "Burton and Depp put their stamp on Sweeney Todd, bringing the Demon Barber of Fleet Street to life for a whole new audience." Kim Voynar CINEMATICAL "It's bloody: and it's bloody excellent." Christopher Smith BANGOR DAILY NEWS "The most faithful and effective transfer of a musical to screen I've seen. And bloody good fun." Jim Slotek JAM! MOVIES "Bloody good, a lusciously Grand Guignol excercise that's true to the composer's original vision but spectacularly cinematic as well." Frank Swietek ONE GUY'S OPINION You'll be twisted, manipulated and repulsed, but always entertained. You might also find yourself uttering "God, That's Good." Phil Villarreal ARIZONA DAILY STAR

Sweeney Todd Although there are some who claim that Sweeney Todd really existed and was responsible for 160 murders in 18th century London, it’s more widely accepted that he’s a fictional creation who first came to prominence in a story called "The String Of Pearls: A Romance", written by Thomas Peckett Prest and published in The People’s Periodical in November 1846. According to legend, Todd would cut his customers’ throats while they sat in his barber’s chair, then send their bloody corpses down a chute into the cellar below, where they were chopped up and used as the filling for meat pies by his accomplice in crime, the widowed baker Mrs Nellie Lovett. The pies were then sold to an unsuspecting public. A year later, Prest’s story was adapted as a play that bore the subtitle "The Demon Barber of Fleet Street". Pretty soon, Todd’s notoriety was rivalling that of another infamous 19th century London serial killer: Jack the Ripper. While the Todd story has been the inspiration for many theatrical shows, as well as a number of films for both cinema and television, it was British playwright Christopher Bond’s 1973 stage play, "Sweeney Todd", that first introduced the Barker/Turpin revenge plot now considered part and parcel of Sweeney’s legend. Then, in 1979, using Bond’s play as his template, Stephen Sondheim the legendary American lyricist and composer and recipient of six TONY Awards who's big break came when he wrote the lyrics to "West Side Story". Sondheim, who is one of a very select group to have won an Academy Award ®, a Tony, an Emmy, a Grammy and a Pulitzer Prize, brought the story of Sweeney Todd to a wider audience, with his and Hugh Wheeler’s acclaimed stage musical, "Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street". It debuted on Broadway on March 1st 1979 starring Len Cariou ("Secret Window" & "1408") as Sweeney Todd and six time Golden Globe winner Angela Lansbury as Mrs Lovett. Sondheim’s "Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street" was quite unlike anything then seen on stage. Bloody and terrifying, with a score inspired by the work of legendary soundtrack composer Bernard Herrmann ("Psycho", "The Birds"), it initially startled audiences, but quickly became recognized as Sondheim’s masterpiece, with the production swiftly transferring to London and later being revived on Broadway in 1989 and 2005. The Inside Story "I think the reason 'Sweeney Todd' has endured for 150 years is that it’s a really good story; a very gripping tale. It’s a story about revenge and how revenge eats itself up," says Academy Award winner Stephen Sondheim ("Dick Tracy"), the creator of the acclaimed stage musical "Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street". "In that sense it’s a tragedy in the classic tradition about someone who goes out for revenge and ends up destroying himself." "Beyond the fact that it has the arguably has the greatest score of any musical in last 50 years, the reason why Sweeny is such a classic is that for all of its murder and mayhem, it is about lost love," adds producer Walter Parkes ("The Ring" & "The Kite Runner"). "It combines our most violent impulses with our most tender. It is from the collision of these qualities that it derives its overwhelming power." What sets “Sweeney Todd” apart from other stories is the solid emotional core of the story. "The key to 'Sweeney Todd' is emotion," says 2004 Hollywood Film Festival Screenwriter of the Year, John Logan. "It is a very passionate story about a man who is wronged, who seeks revenge. And, in the process of achieving that revenge, goes mad. It’s also about a woman who’s in love with him, who yearns for him but can’t make a connection with him. And it’s about a young girl, raised by a brutal stepfather, trying to find love and happiness. All these emotional through-lines collide in 'Sweeney Todd', and the fact that it’s heightened by music and singing makes it all the more lushly romantic. But at heart it’s a very passionate, dark love story." 1998 Golden Satellite Award winning producer Laurie MacDonald ("Catch Me If You Can" & "Gladiator") remembers seeing the play on Broadway. "It was so original. Witty, and dark, and yet ultimately moving and tragic. And the music is so otherworldly and beautiful." She and her producing partner Parkes (ShoWest Producers Of The Year 1998), were so taken by it that, when they headed production at DreamWorks Pictures, they secured the film rights from Sondheim. "There’s a strange kinship that exists between the lovers of Sweeney Todd that borders on the fanatic," Parkes notes. "It’s almost an instant barometer of a shared sensibility." "I saw the original Broadway show three times with Angela Lansbury and Len Cariou," recalls the films screenwriter and one of its producers John Logan ("Star Trek: Nemesis" & "Any Given Sunday"). "I’d never seen anything like it in my life. I fell in love with it and it’s stayed with me until now." Although director Tim Burton didn’t see the original Broadway production, he did attend an early performance in London while he was a student there. "I’m not a big musical fan, but I loved it," he recalls. "I didn’t know anything about Stephen Sondheim. The poster just looked kind of cool, kind of interesting. It’s like an old horror movie but the music is such an interesting juxtaposition, being very beautiful while the imagery is kind of old horror movie. And it was interesting to see something bloody on stage, too. I went to see it twice because I liked it so much." For Sondheim it seemed logical that the next step would be to make a film version of his acclaimed production. When Parkes and MacDonald acquired the movie rights to "Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street", they turned to long-time collaborator and the writer of the studio’s Academy Award ® winning "Gladiator", John Logan. Before Logan began writing the script, he spent six months studying Sondheim’s score, "just by myself, to be absolutely familiar with what the beast was. I also read the original Chris Bond melodrama and compared it to the Hugh Wheeler book for the musical, and really got to know the music backwards and forwards. Then I went to New York, and Stephen and I worked through it." Adapting a three hour stage musical into a two-hour movie clearly meant changes. Some songs were exorcised completely, others merely truncated. "We cut out verses, but also expanded certain areas. A fair amount of work was done cutting and shaping. We wanted to keep it very tightly focused on Sweeney Todd’s journey, so other secondary or tertiary elements fell away. In the show, Johanna, Todd’s daughter, sings a lot more; she and Anthony are more musical characters, but I felt that the focus of the story really needed to be on Sweeney Todd and Mrs Lovett, and Toby to a certain extent. I wanted to focus on that triangle as much as I could," Logan explained. For Sondheim, a film version offered the chance to change certain lyrics as well as writing new ones that tally with certain structural and narrative changes imposed by the script. "Stage time and movie time are different," Sondheim explained. "You accept on the stage somebody sitting and singing for three minutes about one subject, but in film you get the idea very quickly and you suddenly have two and a half minutes too much. The problem is how do you keep the integrity of the score and yet cut things? But John maintained much of the score and still kept the cinematic value of the songs going." Part of his contract gave Sondheim approval over the casting of Sweeney Todd, Mrs Lovett, and the choice of director. "He’s a formidable character," notes Burton. "He’s very intelligent, very passionate, he’s a genius at what he does, but the thing that I have really respected and felt very grateful for is him letting it go. It’s not a stage thing. It’s a movie. Go for it. I felt very supported by that. The other thing that impressed me and immediately made me like him was, when I first met him, he was talking to me about how he wrote this like a Bernard Herrmann score. And what’s really interesting, when you take away the singing, and it happened when we were recording it, it is like a Bernard Herrmann score: it’s really amazing. When Sondheim mentioned that Burton thought, "I’m in, completely." "He’s a perfect fit," says Sondheim of Burton. "In many ways it’s his simplest film, his most direct film, but you can see that he’s telling a story he really likes. It’s a story that has enough incident in it so he doesn’t have to invent extracurricular stuff. He has enthusiasm for the piece and he just goes; forgive me; straight for the jugular." Producer Richard D Zanuck ("Jaws") notes, "Tim is the perfect director for 'Sweeney Todd'. There is such an affinity between the subject matter and Tim’s style and sensibility. He is a stylist but also at his heart he’s a dramatist who just wants to tell a simple, human love story." Zanuck also noted that "Tim Burton was born to direct the movie." When it came to the casting the lead characters of Sweeney Todd and Mrs Lovett, Burton was determined to skew the cast younger for his film. "It just felt that part of the energy on this was to make them a bit younger, in their fourties, and have the kids be kids, so the ages were a bit more appropriate to what the story really was, and it’s not a teenager being played by a thirty year old," Burton explained. "That, to me, was an energy that was very filmic as opposed to a stage thing when you could get away with it." Parkes observed that "Tim very much wanted there to be a potential for romance, two people who had a moment and lost it. I think Helena does as much as Johnny to deliver that. There’s a moment at the end where she sings one of my favorite songs, 'By the Sea', in which she is imagining the life she and Sweeney and little Toby could have if they could just let this all go. It’s so poignant and so beautiful because it’s simple, direct, unadorned and legitimately emotional." "The absolute core of Mrs Lovett is that she’s in love with this man who never notices her," says Bonham Carter. "He doesn’t even look at her, except when she comes up with the genius idea of how to dispose of his bodies when, suddenly, she’s visible. She was Sweeney’s landlord 15 years ago, when he was married. So when Sweeney comes back from Australia and finds her, she gives him back his old room, above her pie shop. But the thing is, she’s always been in love with Sweeney." "When we first meet Sweeney Todd he’s a very mysterious character," says Logan. "As the story goes on, we learn what led him to this very dark place. He’s just escaped from penal servitude in Australia. He was floating on a raft in the middle of the ocean, trying to make his way to London because he is on a mission of revenge." To play his Sweeney Todd, director Tim Burton had only one actor in mind. "Johnny Depp plays Sweeney Todd as only Johnny Depp can," says Zanuck. "Talk about a risk taker. The bigger the risks, the more attractive a role is to Johnny." Zanuck revealed audiences will be in for a surprise because Depp will "have a voice that people will be absolutely astounded by." "I know he’s musical," says Burton, "because he was in a band. But I think I saw him so clearly as Sweeney Todd, in a way. And I know he wouldn’t just do anything with me just to do it. That’s all I needed and I just knew he could. It was just a feeling I had that he could do it." In the 1980s, Depp had played guitar in a band in Florida called 'The Kids', although he says he never actually sang an entire song. "I was the guy who would come in and sing the harmony, very quickly," Depp said. Zanuck recalls the day he first heard Depp’s singing voice. "I was in my office on the phone. Tim bursts in and lays down a little cassette player and his headphones and he walks out. So I got off the phone, put them on, and listened to Johnny sing for the first time. I went into Tim's office, and we both just stared at each other with great relief. We had the biggest smiles because we knew we had a great voice with Johnny Depp, and we knew he could really pull this off." "I’ve always admired Johnny because of his choices as an actor, and because he’s always done things according to his own lights," says Bonham Carter. 'Sweeney Todd' marks Depp and Burton’s sixth film together. "They are like any good team with almost an unspoken way of doing things, and can practically read each other’s minds," says Zanuck. "Johnny looks to Tim for guidance and Tim looks to Johnny for taking what he has outlined and pushing it a little further. They really love each other and would do anything for each other." The first audiences to be treated to a view of 'Sweeney Todd', were at the Venice Film Festival in September 2007 where Burton was awarded the Golden Lion for career achievement. Synopsis

Benjamin Barker, a man unjustly imprisoned for fifteen years on the other side of the world, has made his way back to London. Adopting the guise of Sweeney Todd, Barker returns to his old barber shop above Mrs Lovett’s pie-making premises, and sets his sights on Judge Turpin who, with help from his nefarious henchman Beadle Bamford, shipped him off on a trumped-up charge in order to steal his beautiful wife Lucy, and his baby daughter Johanna from him. Mrs Lovett reveals to Todd that his wife Lucy, poisoned herself after Judge Turpin took advantage of her. But when a rival barber, the flamboyant Italian Pirelli, threatens to expose Sweeney’s real identity, Todd immediately despatches Pirelli by cutting his throat. Not knowing what to do with the body, Mrs Lovett sees this crisis as a potential solution to her ailing business. She suggests using human flesh as the filling for her pies.

The Verdict "Bloody marvellous! The great Johnny Depp knows no limitations. Here, in "Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber Of Fleet Street", he goes beyond anything he has done in the past to give a scintillating performance that includes showcasing what a wonderful, rich singing voice he has, performing songs with all the skills of a seasoned entertainer. What really sets this film apart is the superb cast surrounding Depp, all of whom make outstanding contributions. Almost rivalling Depp's performance is that of National Board of Review Award winner Helena Bonham Carter as Mrs Lovett. This highly under-rated actress gives a truly inspirational performance, the highlight of which is the segment 'By the Sea'. "Sweeney Todd" was helmed by 2007 National Board of Review Best Director Award winner Tim Burton, shot by D.O.P Dariusz Wolski, costumed by two time Academy Award winner Colleen Atwood, production design by four time David di Donatello Award winner and 2005 Oscar winner Dante Ferretti and superbly cast by Susie Figgis ("The Full Monty" & "Purely Belter"). "Sweeney Todd" is a remarkable achievement by all who were involved in the making of this wickedly, stunning film. One totally deserving of much kudos. 4 1/2 STARS" Cast & Crew Bytes "SWEENEY TODD: THE DEMON BARBER OF FLEET STREET" stars .......
Johnny Depp ["The Astronaut's Wife", "Chocolat", "Once Upon a Time in Mexico" and "Finding Neverland"]; Helena Bonham Carter ["Fight Club", "Corpse Bride" and "Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit"]; Alan Rickman ["Love Actually", "Snow Cake" and "Perfume: The Story of a Murderer"]; Jayne Wisener ["Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street"]; Ed Sanders ["Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street"]; Laura Michelle Kelly [Stage Peoductions of "Beauty and the Beast", "Mary Poppins" and "The Lord of the Rings"]; Sacha Baron Cohen ["Ali G Indahouse", "Talladega Nights" and "Borat"]; Jamie Campbell Bower ["Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street"] and Timothy Spall O.B.E. ["Nicholas Nickleby", "Gettin' Square", "The Last Samurai" and "Enchanted"] as Beadle Bamford.
"SWEENEY TODD: THE DEMON BARBER OF FLEET STREET" was .......
directed by 2002 Leo Award winner Tim Burton ["Point Blank", "Sleepy Hollow" and "Big Fish"]; screenplay by John Logan ["Gladiator", "The Last Samurai" and "The Aviator"]; casting by Susie Figgis ["Touching The Void", "Bride & Prejudice", "Breakfast on Pluto" and "Catch a Fire"]; costume design by 2000 & 2006 BAFTA Award winner Colleen Atwood ["Planet Of The Apes", "Chicago", "Big Fish" and "Memoirs of a Geisha"]; production design by Three time BAFTA Award Dante Ferretti ["Gangs of New York", "The Aviator" and "The Black Dahlia"]; set decoration by Francesca Lo Schiavo ["Gangs of New York", "Cold Mountain" and "The Aviator"] edited by Chris Lebenzon ["Top Gun", "Days of Thunder", "Con Air" and "Armageddon"]; director of photography Dariusz Wolski ["Dark City", "Hide and Seek" and "POTC 1, 2 & 3"]; musical adaptation by Christopher Bond ["Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street"]. Who's Who?

Johnny Depp Helena Bonham Carter Alan Rickman Timothy Spall Jayne Wisener Ed Sanders Laura Michelle Kelly Sacha Baron Cohen Jamie Campbell Bower

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Sweeney Todd Mrs Lovett Judge Turpin Beadle Bamford Johanna Toby Beggar Woman Signor Adolfo Pirelli Anthony Hope

Run Time 116 minutes Rated MA15+ [AUST] Copyright ©2008 - Warner Bros - All Rights Reserved ©2008 All Rights Reserved - The Movie Pages & Impact Internet Services - Protected by Australian & International Copyright & Trademark Laws.