What? It's a bloody musical?
Belatedly caught up with Tim Burton's Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street at my local multiplex last night. A friend tells me that his father went to see the film with no idea that it was a musical and felt it had been mis-sold. Steve Rose wrote a short piece about this in the Guardian the other day, and I wrote a column about the way foreign-language films are dishonestly trailered in Word last year. But I hadn't even noticed that the trailers for Sweeney Todd disguised the fact that it is rendered mostly in song. What a strange thing to conceal! I did actually get a feeling from parts of the audience in the almost-full cinema last night of tangible surprise, perhaps even dismay, that from word one, it's sung. Nobody actually walked out, although I could see a couple of younger people to my left shifting in their seats as Johnny Deep exercised his fabulous Anthony Newley singing voice on the ship sailing up the Thames.They always say we're "media-savvy" (oh, how I hate that term), so you have to assume that most people make informed choices in the foyer before handing over ticket money, and might indeed have read a review, or spotted the name "Stephen Sondheim" on the poster, but it's a fact also that some people - and they tend to be younger, and with little real interest in the cinema - turn up, do a lucky dip, buy a crate of popcorn and enter the darkness. These will be the people like those I had the misfortune to share a cinema with for Michael Clayton, who talked and laughed and texted throughout, hellbent on ensuring that those who actually chose to come and see a talky legal drama couldn't enjoy it. (My first experience of this was back in Streatham, when it soon became clear that the Bruce Willis fans in the audience had not expected the existential and ecological challenges of Twelve Monkeys. Perhaps they'd been hoping for a film about twelve monkeys. They expressed their dismay by talking and smoking throughout. The cinema - one of the old three-screen kinds, recently redeveloped into flats, I note - seemed unstaffed.) To the credit of last night's hoodwinked audience, they all stayed put, and the music was loud enough to drown out any muttering arising from the confusion. Interestingly, a few patrons did leave early, but we're talking an hour and a half into a two hour film. It's possible that the unremitting bloody violence got to them. (It really is graphic and constant and sadistic, by the way. Horror films these days get away with a 15 certificate, but this is an 18.)
As expected, although I'm not Burton's biggest fan (I find him lacking in warmth), I admired the grand design and the audacity of the enterprise, and Depp is a joy to behold. Also, it's incredibly visceral. The singing is real and not always technically dazzling, but it suits the style of execution, as it were. One comment, though: I did get bored. Once the barber shop is established, very little new happens in the story, and the songs are not exactly big production numbers, more like opera on the scale of a kitchen sink drama, so they don't compensate for the lack of vital plot.
You shouldn't get bored in the cinema of a Friday night, really. Not when all that money's been spent on entertaining you. Mind you, I didn't start talking or texting. I acted accordingly.
posted by Andrew Collins @ 10:02 AM
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AC: Not sure but we may have gone to the same screening of 12 monkeys in streatham, it was the day of national cinema day (where every film was £1) we'd gone down early and bought tickets for 2-3 films. When we got back to streathan odeon it was surrounded by 1-2 hundred kids. When the doors opened there was near riot. The sweet counter was looted and people (mostly ticketless)just rushed the screens. I don't know why we stayed but we did and had to watch 12 monkeys with pop corn flying, constant talking and one point a bit of argy bargy. I think they stopped the promotion after that!
You have more patience than me. I always feel like embarking on a vigilante tour round the cinema when people start acting up.
I must have "anger issues", or perhaps it is because I was brought up to behave myself so it's just years of repression. Perhaps I'll crack one day, 'Falling Down' style!
The manners manifesto that Odeon put up before the film starts ought to be enforcable by them with ejection I think.
That way, I'd know they really are mad about film, rather than mad about getting my money out of my pocket and then leaving me to stew.
Hrrumph!
Andrew,
I really welcomed this post you know. Me and my partner went to see this last week, swayed by the hype and I also found it boring. I didn't find Depp 'maginificent' either though, sadly. (And I'd loved Scissor Hands and Chocolate Factory.) For me, it verged on the self indulgent, like the oh so very clever director, writers and stars were saying: "Look at this fantastic specimen, oh isn't he lush? And what an actor, it's Johnny Depp you know - and oh look at my Missus, she's ever so beautiful, isn't she?"
Of course you get used to that in big budget films, but what pissed me off with this one was to see/hear the likes of Jonathan Ross call it a "masterpiece" and Mark Kermode brown-nose Burton and Depp on whatever his show with that lovely Laverne Lady is called!
To an untrained eye, these 'critics' seem to forget that us mere "men and women in the street" go to the cinema to be entertained. Why can't they tell the truth instead of trying to show off how sophisticated/clever they are?
This was bum-achingly dull - Helena Bonham Carter seemed to have the same costume and to be playing the same part as in every other film I've seen her in and the only glint of hope I saw was Sacha Baron Cohen's dodgy back street showman.
I love Timothy Spall - but even he couldn't save it for me - the last film I saw was Enchanted, with him in it - and I preferred that.
There! I'm sorry I have gone off on one a bit - but it's good to see a film critic saying he was bored by a film that for me anyway had a touch of The King's New Clothes about it.
Phew. Glad to get that off my chest!
A musical eh ?
A MUSICAL ?!?!?!?!
My irrational response is, at least, consistent.
Not a chance. Not going to bother seeing it now.
Advertise it *clearly* as a musical if that's what it is. From the adverts I thought it was a regular film. An honest to goodness... slips into Al Murray mode... decent film.
Bah.
Interesting to hear your feelings, Linda. It may well be that it's a technical masterpiece (of sorts), but that doesn't make it five-star entertainment. I don't really think of myself as a film critic, in that I review films for Radio Times but I don't spend my week attending screenings with other critics - I see occasional films before they're released, but mostly, I go to the cinema. I think if you go to screenings and not to the cinema, you lose the ability to judge a film on more general terms. We mustn't bemoan enthusiasm among critics - who have every right to be jaded - but sometimes you must also take five-star reviews with a pinch of salt. (I speak as someone who has doled out five stars on more than one occaions, including to There Will Be Blood in Radio Times, as it happens, although I doubt many people us our website as a guide before going to the cinema! We certainly never get on film posters!) It's weird how the Guardian have got into the habit of advertising their five-star reviews on the front page. They did it on Friday, basically saying: our critic has given three five-star reviews! Get us!
I had a similar experience, with the crowd clearly bemused, then irritated by the singing from minute-zero. I *did* know it was a musical going in, but didn't realize it's not the type of musical where GOOD songs breakout every 5-10 minutes.
In ST, the singing is practically every 2 minutes, and very few of the songs are THAT good -- although some of the lyrics are quite slick.
However, both the audience and myself kind of acclimatized to ST after 30-40 minutes... and I actually began to welcome the singing when the emotional highs came in the last half hour.
Beyond the irritation some may find with the musical aspect (purely because of bad advertising, if nothing else), everything else about ST was excellent. Depp and co were excellent, and it looks brilliant, with amazing bloodshed and a fitting/downbeat ending.
At least people aren't having sex in your local cinemas! This seems to be the latest craze in Milton Keynes - couples actually having sex in their cimena seat without a care in the world. One of my friends actually saw a couple doing it during the Garfield Movie. What is wrong with people these days?
Zoe
I was sitting next to a couple aged 50+, who were extremely fidgity and left the cinema and came back several times for supplies of drinks and nachos. Halfway into the film the gentleman of the pair farted very loudly and then promptly fell asleep for the remainder of the film. Possibly they were drunk.
Its not just the young 'uns!
I enjoyed the film enough, it was fine, but I'll not bother seeing it again.
I would imagine Tim Burton would never be able to make his most interesting and successful films without the freedom to take commercial chances. Did you also see "The Corpse Bride"? Although this wasn't a musical, it had a fairly big musical presence which I found amusing, though I would have found it tiresome in its Disney counterparts.
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