Sweeney Todd

I don't believe Tim Burton is a taste that can be acquired. You either love him, passionately, or you hate him, passionately. So those of you who have never been able to stand a Tim Burton film - and no, Beetlejuice doesn't count - you are now officially dismissed. For the rest of us who can't help but adore Burton's stylized, schizo-weird wonderfulness - it was indeed inevitable that Burton would do Sweeney Todd and just as inevitable that it would star Johnny Depp and Mrs. Burton (Helena Bonham-Carter) and that it would be very, very stylized and very, very gory and very, very wonderful.

For those of you who managed to miss the lengthy Broadway run of Sondheim's macabre musical, here's the gist: Sweeney Todd returns to London after a long unjust incarceration determined to have his vengeance on the judge who sent him away in order to acquire his wife. He falls into company with the rather lovestruck and diabolical Mrs. Lovett and the two of them proceed to off a good deal of the male population of their squalid little neighborhood - he barbering them off the mortal coil and she serving them up as meat pies. Ewwww! How delightful! Trust that there will be lots of white faces with sunken dark eyes, ooodles of gallows humor and gallons of very theatrical blood spurting.

But the really wonderful part is Johnny Depp can sing. No really. He has the presence and the timbre of a rock star, and is all Depp brooding sexuality. sigh. Carter carries a tune pretty darn well herownself and the music is catchy and memorable. Add in a hilarious Sacha Baron Cohen as a rival barber and the impeccable Alan Rickman as the evil Judge Turpin and whoa... you've got a great messy Broadway musical masterpiece ala Burton. Catch the equally cool website here.