Some shepherd's pie peppered with actual shepherd

 Continuing my trip down Empire’s top 100 films of the century so far…

  • #86 - Iron Man
    Rewatched this recently snd still enjoyed it!
  • #87 - Bridesmaids
    I'm not a big fan of comedy (I'm a serious fellow) but I do recall laughing at this one a few times

Which brings us on to a film there would have been absolutely no danger of me watching unless forced to - Sweeney Todd : The Demon Barber Of Fleet Street.  I'm not a massive fan of musicals and for some unclear reason I think I don't like Stephen Sondheim musicals, despite only ever having seen Into The Woods and enjoying it.  I'm also not a huge fan of either Tim Burton (particularly his later stuff) or Johnny Depp (ditto), so you can tell this film was really ticking all my boxes.


And whilst I didn't hate it, it was a bit of a drag.  It's both stylish and stylised, being good to look at - when they're not stumbling around in the pitch black, which happens more often than it needs to.  The performances are generally pretty good - Helena Bonham-Carter in particular acts and sings well, as does Ed Sanders as Toby, the boy.  Johnny Depp is less effective, he appears to be channelling grumpy David Bowie - he does lots of staring into the distance and speaking through his songs.  It's also nice to see Alan Rickman in something, even if he doesn't exactly have a lot to do.


The songs are very clever when they're clever, but I wasn't as impressed by them as I was by Into The Woods and sometimes the level of the vocal is a bit low so I found them hard to follow.  Also, for a film that's 2 hours long, for long periods very little actually happens and I found myself not really caring whether it did or didn't.  The decision to make the murders quite so gruesome is also a bit strange given how the rest of the film is so stylised - with all the black, white and red around (and the odd couple doing strange dancing and singing) there are times it feels like a White Stripes video.


However, reading up on the film on Wikipedia, I see that most critics disagree with me and Johnny Depp got a nomination for an Oscar.  So what do I know eh?!?  But there's no danger of me revisiting this, I'm afraid.






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