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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #194 in DVD
• Released on: 2008-05-19
• Rating: Suitable for 18 years and over
• Formats: Box set, PAL
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 2
• Running time: 111 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
After years of rumours, it turns out that Tim Burton was the perfect visionary to film Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, Stephen Sondheim's Broadway masterpiece, and the result is a macabre and moving musical movie as enthralling as anything Burton has ever done. The show's mix of gothic horror, Grand Guignol, very dark humor, and witty and beautiful music never was the stuff of traditional musical comedy, but it's a powerful work, and perhaps the richest of the late 20th century. In the movie, Burton's frequent collaborator, Johnny Depp, plays Todd, a wronged man whose lust for revenge drives him to murder (an 19th-century legend who has been traced to a real-life barber). Helena Bonham Carter, another Burton mainstay, is Mrs. Lovett, the barber's partner-in-unspeakable-crime. It's no surprise that Depp is an excellent choice to convey Todd's brooding intensity and volcanic rage, but he can also sing a score that is so challenging it has often played in opera houses (though not with the same style as the Broadway original, Len Cariou, and he occasionally lapses into pop style). Bonham Carter is small of voice and lacks the humour of the original Broadway Lovett, Angela Lansbury, but she sings on pitch, in rhythm, and in character at the same time, which is no small feat for a Sondheim show. Aficionados will regret the loss of certain musical passages--"The Ballad of Sweeney Todd" is just an instrumental overture and the chorus is gone altogether, among others, but the reassuring presence of orchestrator Jonathan Tunick and conductor Paul Gemignani ensures that the music feels right and sounds great. And the film's depiction of a Victorian London hellhole, with cinematography by Dariusz Wolski and costumes by Colleen Atwood, also looks and feels right.

The excellent cast is filled out by Alan Rickman as the villainous Judge Turpin, Timothy Spall as his seedy Beadle, Sacha Baron Cohen as a rival barber, Jamie Campbell Bower as the young lover Anthony, Jayne Wisener as his object of affection, and Ed Sanders as the young Toby. For fans of Tim Burton and Johnny Depp who don't think they like musicals, Sweeney Todd should be a revelation (though not for the squeamish, as the gore is intense and completely appropriate). For fans of Broadway and Sondheim, it's hard to imagine getting a better adaptation than this. The fact that there's no newly composed Oscar-bait song sung by a Josh Groban-type over the end credits only makes it better. --David Horiuchi

DVD Description
Sweeney Todd - The Demon Barber Of Fleet Street sees director Tim Burton (Corpse Bride) and Johnny Depp team up once more to bring the acclaimed Stephen Sondheim musical to the big screen. Depp stars in the title role as a man unjustly sent to prison who vows revenge for his cruel punishment, and for the treatment of his wife and daughter...

Special Features

- Burton + Depp + Carter = Todd

- Sweeney Todd is Alive: The Real History of the Demon Barber (featurette)

- Musical Mayhem: Sondheim's Sweeney Todd (featurette)

- Sweeney's London (featurette)

- Designs for a Demon Barber

- Grand Guinol: A Theatrical Tradition (featurette)

- A Bloody Business

- Razor's Refrain

- Photo Gallery

Synopsis
Tim Burton brings his trademark sense of dark whimsy to this stage-to-screen adaptation of Stephen Sondheim's classic musical. Johnny Depp reteams with the director to play the titular Demon Barber of Fleet Street, with Helena Bonham Carter, Alan Rickman, and Sacha Baron Cohen as his co-stars.

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Customer Reviews

Bleedin Marvellous!
This has rapidly become one of my favourite films of all time! Bloody Brilliant!

Johnny Depp and Helena Bohnam Carter are fantastic, I was wary of their singing to begin with, but soon you forget and are immersed in the story and I couldn't imagine anyone else in their roles.

The visual effects are amazing, I love the use of dark, dingy colours followed by the vibrant splash of scarlet blood splattered everywhere! If you are a bit scared of blood I would watch out, as it is quite graphic! It does have an 18 certificate for a reason!!

Brilliant
My only problem is that you cant always understand what they're saying while they're singing so i had to figure the plot out by other means. loved it though, would give it 4 1/2 if i could

Such a disappointment - it had so much potential.
Now this should've been really good. "Sweeney Todd" has one of the best (and most difficult to perform) scores of any 20th century musical... So what did they do with it? Dumbed it down and removed over half of the material so that the cast of actors-who-can-sing could manage it. It really needed singers-who-could-act. That said, Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham-Carter do a really good job with what they've got and the final scenes are wonderful. I found the highly-stylised London too much like "300" or "Sin City" and it just didn't work for me. It's fine if you're making a movie based on a graphic novel but for one that isn't? It just looked out-of-place. The only Tim Burton film I don't want to watch again.