Sweeney Todd

Sunday, December 23, 2007

I do not share America's love affair with Tim Burton. Nothing personal against the guy or anything, I just don't get what people seem to love about him so much. I mean, I wouldn't by any stretch of the imagination say I hated his movies. Hell, I'm quite fond of Pee Wee's Big Adevnture and Ed Wood. But most the rest of Burton's films are pretty mediocre. And I don't get why some people have such a reverence for him, like he's an all-time great. I don't see that.

I'm not really that into movie musicals either. For that matter, I'm not big on the musicals in general, but the style at least makes more sense to me on stage. The whole delivery, attitude, performances... the way everything is played big and broad and "for the cheap seats" or whatever, I just don't think comes off well usually in movies. Not my bag, I'm saying.

So why, pray tell, did I go see Sweeney Todd? I'm a movie optimist, that's why. I'm open minded. I go into movies hoping for the best. I like to broaden my horizons. Etc. And so forth.

For the first hour or so of Sweeney Todd, I actually thought it might turn out to be the great movie some reviewers had made it out to be. It seemed like it might actually be the perfect blend of director and material. You know, finally all of Burton's moody goth-y bullshit made sense in the context of the movie. The weird mix of gloominess with some faint goofy humor... Burton's aesthetic actually worked for the movie.

And maybe for the first time since Ed Wood I felt like Burton maybe cared about his characters and telling their story. I guess some people would argue that Big Fish had a heart, but I felt that all the drama and whatnot was just an excuse to get to the next show-offy, visually fantastic sequence of whatever. Like most of his movies.

Sweeney Todd is a little like that, but in a more subdued way than Burton usually goes for. The story is a lot more internal, trying to expose the darkness in the hearts of the characters. The gloomy world around them seems a perfect extension of their inner-being. Almost every character in this story seems to harbor dark secrets, and seems capable of some rather heinous villain-ry.

The darkness of this story is really great, too. I'm not used to seeing a musical this fucking grim. Musicals are usually some big romp... even when they are melodrama, they are extravagant melodrama. Sweeney Todd is every bit as exaggerated as, say, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forumn, but it tells a really bitter, violent tale. Oh, and some of the music is fucking great.

So, wow, I'm pretty blown away for the first half or so. Then, as we're getting to the really violent, throat-slitting extravaganza part of the story (you know, the part that actually seems tailor made for me), it seems like a lot of the energy suddenly drains out of the movie. There's a lot of meandering, right when we want the revenge story to take off. There are a lot of subplots that don't seem to build up to anything. Then, the big, violent, finale actually seemed kind of anticlimactic to me. Even though practically everyone is dead by the end, it didn't feel like much actually happened. The ending is especially unsatisfying.

Maybe that was the point. I certainly wouldn't want this movie to have a happy ending, that wouldn't make sense. But it felt like a lot of buildup for not much of an ending.

So, I feel a little disappointed. For the first hour or so, I was convinced that this would be one of my favorites of the year. Instead it's another Tim Burton movie that I'm in no rush to watch again.