Movie review: Bloody valentine with 'Sweeney Todd'

Hand a grownup classic like Stephen Sondheim's Victorian revenge tragedy to a brilliant but immature talent like Tim Burton and there's potential for disaster. Miracle of miracles: Rather than reducing the story to a kitschy cartoon, the director of "Batman" and "Beetlejuice" used it to make his most accomplished and adult film to date.

His adaptation is darkly beautiful, not only in its vivid visuals -- we expect no less from Burton's ornate imagination -- but in the chilling performances and emotional clout of the score. Telling a carefully plotted story has always been Burton's failing; building on Sondheim's sturdy foundation, he's made a serious, adult masterpiece.

There's a current of bitterness and despair even in Burton's lightest comedies, and this Victorian melodrama gives him license to dig into those themes without irony.

He establishes his command of the story from the opening scene, with Todd entering London on a schooner that recalls Nosferatu's plague ship. Johnny Depp steps into a claustrophobic closeup with vampire-pale skin and the madhouse eyes of a man hollowed out by rage.

Todd establishes the city's claustrophobic nastiness and his own deranged fury in 10 seconds of tightly rhymed harmony: "There's a hole in the world/ Like a great black pit/ And the vermin of the world inhabit it/ And its morals aren't worth/ What a pig could spit/ And it goes by the name of London."

Not the kind of barber you'd choose for joshing and sports chat, but an eerie, oddly sexy antihero for a tale of carnage and cannibalism. Todd is returning to England from Australia, imprisoned there on false charges by Judge Turpin (suave, lecherous Alan Rickman), who coveted Todd's lovely wife. The barber is itching to draw one of his beloved blades across the judge's jugular.

His opportunistic neighbor, bake-shop owner Mrs. Lovett (Helena Bonhan Carter), encourages him to take a few practice strokes on other customers, and grinds the corpses into tasty fillings for her meat pies. "Think of it as thrift, a gift," the pragmatic widow sings, "if you get my drift." Bonham Carter is a comic delight, thanks to her matter-of-fact way with gallows humor and knack for smacking her slovenly shop's roaches in time to the musical beat.

The supporting cast is nothing short of ideal. Timothy Spall, with a face straight out of a Dickens illustration, is leering sadism incarnate as the judge's henchman Beadle Bamford. Sacha Baron Cohen will wipe away all memories of Borat with his menacing turn as Todd's barbering rival Pirelli. Even the romantic juveniles, Jamie Campbell Bower and Jane Wisener, bring power to their roles. Whether the actors sang unaided or their voices were sweetened at the mixing board, they sound spectacular. And they excel on camera; these are singing actors, not acting singers.

Burton's staging of the barber's bloody mayhem involves more splatter than a Gallagher concert; the film fully earns its R rating. Throats open up like hydrants under Todd's razor, and Burton mixes unnervingly clever theatrics with the bloodletting. The film builds thrilling tension when Depp gently caresses Rickman's lathered face, his blade poised to strike while they share a pleasant duet.

By all means go, and be prepared for a holiday musical like no other. Even the cynically downbeat "Chicago" was cheerier than this exhilaratingly pessimistic tale. In this dark operetta, no one lives happily ever after.

Colin Covert • 612-673-7186