The cast of Harry Potter reunite.
Director: Tim Burton
Writers: John Logan (screenplay)
Hugh Wheeler (musical)
Christopher Bond (musical adaptation)
I'm not sure how, but my original statement stands. Johnny Depp gets about singing and murdering the cast of Harry Potter. It's quite incredible really how many people from that series is in this. I don't know whether Helena Bonham Carter approached Burton with the idea to put all these people in this film or it was just a freaky coincidence but that's not what I want to talk about with this one. I wanna talk about the good and the bad. The bad being how throughout most of it, all I could focus on was the fact that both Johnny Depp and Jamie Campbell Bower play Gellert Grindelwald in...what I'm going to call the Wizarding Cinematic Universe. Depp playing him in the Fantastic Beasts series and Campbell Bower playing him for around 5 to 10 seconds in Deathly Hallows Part one, blink and you miss him but he's there. Honestly, this was the thing that was taking up most of my focus, I had to watch this twice to make notes that weren't "this is weird". Yes, I focus on weird shit but...oh well.
Next problem, this whole murderous rampage is brought on because Judge Turpin (Alan Rickman) wanted to get laid and the one thing standing in his way was the fact the women he wanted to fuck was married so he banishes him. Hilarious on its own but later on you see him sentence a child to death by hanging...why not just do that to Todd/Barker (Johnny Depp) in the first place? Maybe your head was clouded with lust for this man's wife but...there was always the possibility that he could come back with Cruella DeVil or Bride of Frankenstein hair (I couldn't choose which one) and go on a killing spree forcing the majority of his neighbours into cannibalism, all in the name of revenge. Sometimes it's best to just either rub one out or go elsewhere.
Another little thing that's more a nitpicky than anything else, everyone's teeth here are just way too nice. Aside from the Beadle (Timothy Spall). His teeth were appropriately shite for the time period this is set in. Plus my very last nitpick would be that during the number Epiphany, my personal favourite song from this aside from Pretty Women, Mrs Lovett (Helena Bonham Carter) pretty much just watches Todd have a breakdown and as the film goes on she practically encourages his mental break. She may see it as just him being angry and vengeful but...he clearly isn't.
What I love in this, is all the creative choices. Like the blood, for example, it's taken me a while to realise this but for years I always thought that the blood in Burton films (when you see it anyway) is always a standout bright red and it looks a hell of a lot like the blood that would be shown in old Hammer Horror movies. I was watching The Devil Rides Out the other night and the blood stood out to me, it's so vivid against the darkness of the rest of the film. I mean the film isn't dark dark like some of the older Hammer films but dark enough that the vividness of the red just really jumps off the screen. I feel like when making his films, Burton has taken a lot of influence from these classics and I love that. It's amazing in a way. The way this is written is also great, being English myself I can see a lot of humour in this that could come across to a lot of other people who aren't British as...just horrible really. Such as in the scene where Toby (Edward Sanders) is talking to Mrs Lovett about his time in the workhouse and she just completely dismisses him with a "that's nice" sort of line. It really is beautiful to see the English mannerisms being accurately portrayed in this. Maybe it's because it's a mostly English cast but I just loved it. Last good thing I want to talk about is the music. Personally, I love film musicals...mostly. Mamma Mia was more representative of a stage musical thrown on screen because of high demand. This one doesn't hold you hostage which I'm extremely thankful for. Everyone here has a pretty good voice to listen to, I don't know about the technicalities of it but for a general audience who don't know about singing technicalities, it's pretty good. Shockingly good voice in Sacha Baron Cohen, makes you wonder what his voice is like when he's not doing an Italian accent while singing.
So that's it, this is a really good Tim Burton film to look at when you think about his recent decline in filmmaking, specifically his "reimaginings". I mean Miss Peregrine's Home For Peculiar Children was a damn good film and even has the funniest fight scene I've seen in a film in a long time. I'm sure it wasn't supposed to be funny but it was just hilarious. Anyway, this was your second one for today, have a good night guys.
This is just my opinion and if you disagree then that's great, I'm open to discussion and I'm always interested to hear how you feel about this film. This is also a critique which is considered "Fair Use" under the Copyright Act 1976. If you like this film then go and support its creators by buying the DVD or Bluray.
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