Retro Review | “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street”: The World’s Worst Shaving Job
Spoilers beware.
My urge to watch Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street didn’t actually come from the film itself — merely the fact that the new Broadway recording came out this year and I wanted to understand the story before I ever listened to it. Am I still going to talk about it? Of course I am. Directed by the one-and-only Tim Burton and released in 2007, Sweeney Todd is a solid adaptation of the tone and overall feel of Stephen Sondheim’s Gothic musical about a great barber-turned-brutal murderer of Fleet Street, London, England…although not without a few small cuts to along the way. I’m really trying to drive this shaving metaphor home, aren’t I?
ANYWAY. Plot synopsis.
The year is 1846, and Benjamin Barker is returning home from a 15-year prison sentence due to a false conviction, thanks to the evil Judge Turpin. He hopes to find his wife and daughter waiting for him. Instead, he finds his old Fleet Street apartment abandoned, with meat pie shop owner Nellie Lovett living below said home. Barker, adopting the name “Sweeney Todd”, allies with Lovett to not only kill Turpin (before he marries the 15-year-old Johanna, Sweeney’s daughter and ward to Turpin), but dish out some vicious razor-wielding violence upon the people…
