I have to admit that Sweeney Todd had let-down written all over it.  A gruesome musical story (filled with Stephen Sondheim’s offbeat and morbid songs), Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter, the wonderfully wicked Alan Rickman, and Tim Burton directing; it sounds like too many good things.  Actually, while I did enjoy it, I didn’t quite enjoy this film as much as I hoped I would.

The fault certainly does not lie with the story.  A generally faithful adaptation of the Broadway musical, Depp plays Sweeney Todd (a pseudonym), a barber once sentenced on a false charge by an evil judge (Rickman) in order that he might possess Depp’s wife and infant daughter.  Now Todd has returned to exact his revenge.  Along the way he is reunited with an old acquaintance Mrs. Lovett, who runs the meat pie shop below the barber shop.  In penny-dreadful fashion, we’re soon treated to slit throats, blood spewing like geysers, and bodies devoured in Mrs. Lovett’s suddenly-popular pies.  A few side stories exist, among them Rickman’s sexual fascination with his ward (Todd’s daughter) and a young sailor’s desire to rescue her and run away.

Burton’s London is dark, smoky, depressing, but still alive, which matches the London described in Sondheim’s lyrics.  The only real flaw in this movie involves the casting of Helena Bonham Carter as Mrs. Lovett.  While she looks the part perfectly – pale and gray and both sensual and decrepit at the same time – her singing is too weak to carry her part.  Depp does a decent job of maintaining the melody, but Carter is too quiet, too much of a whisper to balance him, and the role would benefit from casting someone more over-the-top and boisterous, in the manner of the role Angela Lansbury made famous.  She is simply too fragile. 

It doesn’t ruin the movie by any means, but it takes what could have been a magical thrill and instead reduces it into an enjoyable ride.  You should still see Sweeney Todd, especially if you are a fan of either Tim Burton or the musical…just don’t expect to lose your head over it.