A depraved judge (Alan Rickman) sentences an innocent barber named Benjamin Barker (Johnny Depp) to be exiled while he makes time with his beautiful wife and raises his daughter as his own.  Fifteen years later, Barker returns, changes his name to Sweeney Todd and sets up his new barbershop above a meat pie store ran by Mrs. Lovett (Helena Bonham Carter).  Todd plans revenge on the despicable judge and aims to slash his throat.  After missing an opportunity to do just that, Todd wigs out and sets out to slash the throats of anyone who enters his shop while Mrs. Lovett turns the leftovers into filling for her pies. 

Oh yeah and there’s singing.  Lots of it.

This would seem like ripe material for director Tim Burton and his usual leading man Depp (in his sixth Burton film), but somehow the film never really becomes completely involving.  The biggest stumbling block is the singing.  I had no real qualms with the music (by Stephen Sondheim), but other than Depp (who sounds a bit like David Bowie), no one really had the vocal chops to bring their character’s numbers to life.  Carter is especially weak (she couldn’t carry a tune if she had a backpack) and her feeble vocal stylings rob her of any potential chemistry she may have had with Depp.  Add that to the fact that she’s inexplicably dressed like a Goth prom queen.  Yeah, yeah I know she’s the director’s baby momma, but honestly, couldn’t they find anyone better?

Speaking of lame-o vocalists, how about the two teeny-bopper “romantic leads”?  It would be a bit harsh to call their voices nails on a chalkboard but… actually no it wouldn’t.  But I’ll at least give them that they were finely manicured nails on a chalkboard.  Whenever they were on screen the film was stopped dead in it’s tracks.

Luckily, Depp was around to slash people’s throats.  There were plenty arterial gusts of jugular juice (I counted at least 10) but after about the seventh slashing, it got a little repetitive.   

Sacha Baron (Borat) Cohen has a small but memorable role as an Italian barber who has a shave-off with Todd.  Cohen breathes in a little bit of vitality into the otherwise lethargic proceedings.  Too bad his screen time is abruptly cut short (no pun intended).

If it wasn’t for Depp and the numerous geysers of blood, Sweeney Todd would have been a bust.  You have to hand it to him, not many people would look convincing singing a love song to a straight razor, but somehow Depp manages to pull it off.

In the end, this movie just proves the rule that any Tim Burton movie in which Johnny Depp wields dangerous facial trimming objects isn’t very good.  (Edward Scissorhands being the other film in that category.) 

Tim Burton’s retelling of Roald Dahl’s classic children’s book is entertaining piffle, but can’t hold a candle to the original 1971 version.  As in that film, four snot nosed brats and one decent kid, Charlie (Freddie Highmore) get golden tickets hidden inside chocolate bars to take a tour of koo koo recluse candy magnate Willy Wonka’s (Johnny Depp) chocolate factory.  

The filmmakers boasted that their version was “truer” to the book than the original film, but there are new scenes of Wonka’s past (seen in flashbacks) that aren’t in the book.  They also reinstated the nut counting room (all the bad nuts go down the garbage chute) and Dahl’s original songs, but you’ll still miss the original film’s Oompa Loompas.  Depp is suitably bonkers as Wonka, but he suffers in comparison to Gene Wilder’s malevolently gleeful performance.  The highpoint is the genuinely creepy It’s a Small World Gone to Hell puppet show that precedes Wonka’s entrance, and that alone is worth full admission price.  Still, as Burton remakes/revisions go, it’s only marginally better than his Planet of the Apes redo.  

Co-starring Helena Bonham Carter (also in Apes) and Noah (Shine) Taylor as Charlie’s parents, Christopher Lee as Wonka’s dentist dad, James Fox and Deep Roy as the Oompa Loompas.  Depp and Highmore were also in Finding Neverland together.

Where Batman actually returns FROM I have no idea (maybe he was on vacation or something), but he comes back to star in this uneven but satisfying sequel.  This time Batman (Michael Keaton) fights the ugly, disgusting Penguin (Danny DeVito) who lives in the sewer and the sexy Catwoman (Michelle Pfeiffer).  Max Schreck (Christopher Walken) is the real villain however.  He secretly wants to drain Gotham City of all it’s power and rides on the coattails of the Penguin as he ascends his way to becoming the mayor.  Meanwhile Schreck’s lowly secretary Selina Kyle falls for Bruce Wayne, which complicates their relationship when they have to dress up in black rubber and fight each other.  

It’s darker than the first movie and parents complained about the grotesque Penguin biting people’s noses off.  The Penguin is grosser and uglier than he was in the comics and (like the Joker) gets more screen time than Batman.  He also wears out his welcome pretty fast.  Pfeiffer and Keaton are great in their scenes together (in and out of costume) and Pfeiffer is good at balancing Kyle’s fragmented, broken persona with Catwoman’s sexy, slinky side.  Walken steals the movie though and easily outshines the other two villains.  The art direction and the Impressionistic sets (by Bo Welsh) are impressive but they don’t exactly jibe with the look of the first movie.    

It’s nowhere near as good as the first film and is clearly more of a Tim Burton flick than an honest to God Batman movie.  It also suffers from not having one character as remotely as interesting as the Joker, but the movie actually gets better upon repeated viewings and is a heck of a lot better than the Joel Schumacher directed sequels.  Burton and Keaton bolted after this flick, but returning co-stars Michael Gough and Pat Hingle stuck it out for two more movies.  Michael Murphy, Christy Conway, Paul Reubens and Vincent Schiavelli also co-star.  The popularity of Catwoman led to Burton leaving her alive at the end of the film for a possible spin-off, which took twelve years to finally rear its ugly head.

This big budget blockbuster based on the legendary DC Comic character should have been called The Joker, because that’s who gets all the screen time.  You won’t care though because as played by Jack Nicholson, he’s one of the greatest screen villains of all time.  It’s also one of Jack’s best performances and features more quotable dialogue (“Never rub another man’s rhubarb!”) than you can shake a stick at.  Michael Keaton is pretty good as the brooding Bruce Wayne/Batman, but it would take one more film for him to fully grow into the role.  Director Tim Burton brings a suitably darker tone to the movie than most people were comfortable with, and is wise enough to let Nicholson go gleefully over the top.  The film was heavily criticized for not focusing enough time on Bruce Wayne, but Burton’s purpose is to establish and build up the Batman mythos in the minds of the people (and more importantly the criminals) of Gotham City.  It takes a page from the comic, The Man Who Laughs and shows how gangster Jack Napier becomes The Joker, which parallels how Bruce Wayne evolved into Batman.  (Batman inadvertently drops Napier into a vat full of chemicals, turning him into a psychopathic clown faced killer.)  While The Joker terrorizes the city with tainted beauty products that turn people into grinning corpses, millionaire playboy Bruce Wayne romances photographer Vicki Vale (Kim Basinger) and tries to come to grips with telling her his secret identity.  

The film though really belongs to Nicholson.  He has numerous classic scenes, among my favorites:  The scene where he guns down crime boss Grissom (Jack Palance).  “Jack is dead my friend, you can call me Joker!”  The scene where he defaces works of art in a museum before Batman breaks it up.  “Where does he get those wonderful toys?”  And of course, his immortal line:  “Ever dance with the devil in the pale moonlight?”  We get also get the definitive version of the Batmoblie, as well as the badass Batwing, which Joker shoots out of the sky with his big ass pistol.  

The ten minute lead up to the final mano y mano confrontation between the Caped Crusader and the Clown Prince of Crime was filmed in real time, which is a good idea, but it would have benefited by tighter editing.  Unfortunately, the filmmakers kill off Joker (“Sometimes I just kill myself!”), presumably only because Jack pocketed over $50 million dollars for his role and probably would have wanted double for a sequel.  Co-starring Michael Gough as Alfred, Billy Dee Williams as Harvey Dent (later Two Face), Robert Wuhl, Jerry Hall, and Tracey Walter.  Danny Elfman provided the excellent score and Prince supplied a couple of snappy tunes.  Burton and Keaton teamed up the previous year on Beetlejuice.