Depp makes sweet music with dark horror

Sweeney Todd is Rated R for a marathon of neck slashings that occur in the middle of the film, where it seems to lag a little. I would not recommend bringing children or you’ll risk spoiling their Christmas. They’ll never eat a pie or go to the barber again — and wooly and hungry is no way to go through life.

Todd is based on Stephen Sondheim’s 1979 Broadway musical, which was possibly, although not ever proven, based on a real guy who really slit throats in pre-Victorian London. Todd was supposedly Jack the Ripper way before Jack the Ripper.

Always up for ghoulish emo roles, Depp plays ol’ Sweeney, a barber who was exiled from London after a crooked judge stole his wife and banished him from seeing her. Word on the streets is that she died shortly thereafter. Something like 15 years later, Sweeney, now a fiendish and bitter barber with a skunk hairdo, returns to London to slice himself off a little piece of revenge.

Todd’s somewhat-secret identity is revealed so he joins up with Mrs. Lovett (Helena Bonham Carter, another Burton regular … and his girlfriend), who bakes grotesque meat pies in a roach-infested bakery on Fleet Street. She sings: These are probably the worst pies in London/I know why nobody cares to take them/I should know, I make them.

After disposing of an extortionist Italian competitor (Sacha Baron Cohen), Todd and Mrs. Lovett begin killing and hacking up the barbershop’s customers to be baked into her now-famous meat pies. Mrs. Lovett acts pretty chipper about the whole process, even imagining, in rather specific detail, a marriage with Todd that is fueled by their human-pie profits. Todd is less cozy to the idea and he spends long episodes in front of a large window looking out onto London, even as he drags his blades (“my friends”) across lathered-up throats. All he wants is his wife, and the daughter they had together, back in his life.

There are other characters I’m neglecting, including Judge Turpin (Alan Rickman), who adopted Todd’s daughter and then plans to marry her 15 years later; a young sailor, one of only two innocent characters in the film; a greasy old beggar who threatens to spoil the pie business; and Toby (Ed Sanders), a boy Todd takes in after killing his master. Rickman, who is usually playing Severus Snape this time a year, is always a treat. Sanders, though, at only 14 years old, plays a street mutt with precision. And against Johnny Depp too!

Sweeney Todd is a musical through and through. I have to announce that because the film’s marketing department is playing up Depp and Burton’s sixth collaboration together and downplaying the musical elements in fear that it will turn people, ever fearful of singing and dancing, away from Todd. That’s a mistake. A big one. Play up the music; it’s the film’s best element. And what challenging lyrics, too: Here’s a politician, so oily/It’s served with doily/Have one? The lines, all of them, are sung speedily and their timing is perfect.

Depp is typical Depp, which means he’s very good. Not the best, though. That honor goes to Carter, who seems to embody the ragged spirit and gooey determination of Mrs. Lovett, the meat pie professional.

Sweeney Todd is Rated R for a marathon of neck slashings that occur in the middle of the film, where it seems to lag a little. I would not recommend bringing children or you’ll risk spoiling their Christmas. They’ll never eat a pie or go to the barber again — and wooly and hungry is no way to go through life.