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Sweeney Todd - The Demon Barber of Fleet Street [Blu-ray] [2007]

Director: Tim Burton
Actors: Johnny Depp, Sacha Baron Cohen, Helena Bonham-carter, Alan Rickman, Timothy Spall
Studio: Warner Home Video
Category: DVD

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Rating: 3.0 out of 5 stars

9 reviews
Sales Rank: 5129

Format: Widescreen
Rating: Suitable for 18 years and over
Media: Blu-ray
Number Of Items: 1
Running Time: 112
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 7.1 x 5.4 x 0.6

EAN: 7321900211253
ASIN: B0012YG7RS

Release Date: May 19, 2008
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
Condition: Steelbook - New and factory sealed. UK version normally posted the same day from the West Midlands.

Customer Reviews:

Showing reviews 6-9 of 9

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Gory, pretentious and an awful grainy picture June 2, 2008
0 out of 15 found this review helpful

This is one of those idiotic 'star vehicles', where gushing critics fawn like crazy because luminaries like Tim Burton and Johnny Depp are involved, while the rest of us look on bemused, wondering what the hell it is that we're missing.
Set aside the droning music and the ridiculous over-the-top throat-cutting and bodies crunching head-first on to concrete, and what have you got? A lame and predictable story with no real substance, and a feeling at the end of... what exactly? Uplifted? Tearful? Repulsed?
But by far the worst thing about this is the Blu-Ray print. Tim Burton's 'hand of darkness' renders bug sections of this unwatchable - the shadows are all grainy and scractchy, and on several scenes it was like trying to watch what was happening through a net curtain, it really was that bad. I have seen much better quality DVDs on a bog-standard DVD player... why have I spent thousands on Blu-ray if this is the best it can offer?

2 out of 5 stars

It really is a musical May 23, 2008
2 out of 33 found this review helpful

I missed it at the cinema and just gambled on that fact that it's a Tim Burton film before buying this.
I knew it had musical content and would have been happy to handle the odd tune here and there but it's 90-95% music, which I found too hard to handle. I haven't even managed to make it to the end.
To have a magical cast like this and make them sing instead of act is just plain criminal, I'm sorry. I'm gutted.

4 out of 5 stars

Best film - Oddest Blu-ray? May 19, 2008
1 out of 5 found this review helpful

I love this film to bits, I must have watched it way over a dozen times.
However, this blu-ray is weird... firstly, there is no menu except for the bonus features. When you put the disc in the film plays automatically (which is quite nice in a way), however, the menu for bonus features is rather plain and doesn't really do much... looks like a DVD menu to me (no quick menu either).
Aside from this, the bonus features are great and the quality of the film is superb, there are subtitles for loads of languages and there are French, German, Italian and Spanish audio options.
Lastly, I've been unable to find a Chapter Selection screen! Don't know if there is one on the DVD.
Overall, this is worth getting on Blu ray as this film is gorgeous in HD. But, I feel they've let themselves down with no scene selection and no real menus to choose from (subtitles etc need to manually selected with remote)

5 out of 5 stars

The years have changed him April 28, 2008
17 out of 17 found this review helpful

Murder. Cannibalism. Death. Obsession. Revenge. Blood. Goth makeup. And lots of razors -- "at last, my arm is complete again!" Sweeney Todd exults.

Somehow it doesn't come as a shock to me that Tim Burton adapted Stephen Sondheim's musical "Sweeney Todd - The Demon Barber of Fleet Street" -- or that he somehow spun it into something so delicious. That dark, grotesque, hilariously melodramatic story is perfectly suited to Burton's style, and Johnny Depp is absolutely stunning as the titular bloody barber.

The malignant Judge Turpin (Alan Rickman) lusts after the wife of Benjamin Barker (Depp), so he convicts Barker of a crime he didn't commit, and enfolds his family into his evil hands.

But fifteen years later, the Barker returns to London and sets up a barber shop over Mrs. Lovett's ghastly meat pie store. Of course, he's enraged when he learns that his wife was raped and since poisoned herself, and that his daughter is the ward of the lecherous Judge. Enraged and maddened, Barker renames himself "Sweeney Todd" and vows revenge.

And he finds that he LOVES using his razors for a far bloodier task than shaving. With the help of Mrs. Lovett (Helena Bonham Carter) -- who finds a thrifty use for those bodies -- Todd cuts a bloody swathe through all who have wronged him. And when his daughter is punished for refusing to marry the cruel Judge, Sweeney closes in to get his revenge at last.

There's always been a gothic look to Burton's movies, and he's always dabbled in very twisted, macabre storylines. And he really tops himself with "Sweeney Todd - The Demon Barber of Fleet Street" -- London is painted in black, white and grey, right down to the ghoulish faces of the characters, and their bleak little dens of horror. And songs -- lots of magnificently horrible songs.

But Burton pretty obviously adores the combination of gory grotesquerie and very, very sick humour ("They don't commit sins of the flesh, so it's pretty fresh"). And he doesn't try to make Sweeney or Mrs. Lovett palatable, thankfully. While we sympathize with Sweeney's losses, and the horrors that have changed him into the Demon Barber, you just can't pass over scenes where they sing, "It's man devouring man, my dear!" "Then who are we to deny it in here?"

There are some moments that relieve this gory gothic parade -- there's a sweet love story between Sweeney's daughter and a young sailor. And the plot becomes progressively darker toward the end (yes, it CAN get worse), when the plot throws us some shocking new twists, resulting in a Grecian-tragedy finale soaked in even more gore.

Oh yes, there's blood. Tons of it. It spurts like Monty Python's bloodier sketches, which ends up being more hilarious than yucky -- as is the casual introduction of cannibal meat pies. And there are some spectacularly gross moments, like a finger found in one of the pies.

Burton uses some of his favorite actors in this one, particularly Depp and Bonham-Carter. Depp is THE perfect ideal Sweeney Todd -- his creepy eyes, pallid face and still, almost seductive manner are perfect for the maddened murderous barber. He goes through the movie slashing his razors at the world, and injects a real creepiness into scenes like Sweeney cooing at his "friends."

While she's only a passable singer, Bonham-Carter is eerily wholehearted as Todd's equally amoral partner-in-crime, who is quite happy to assist him.... and make tastier pies in the process. Rickman is wonderfully loathsome as the Judge, and Sacha Baron Cohen has a small but priceless role as Pirello, a huckster acquaintance of Todd's who starts causing trouble. He really steals his scenes.

Most directors would have prettified, sanitized and defanged the grotesque "Sweeney Todd - The Demon Barber of Fleet Street," but Tim Burton and Johnny Depp revel in the gore and madness. Astoundingly great.