I don’t typically like to anticipate movies in public – that is what gossip sites are for, he sniffed with pretentious disdain – but there is absolutely no film in the remainder of 2007 that I’m awaiting with the same intensity of both excitement and fear as Tim Burton’s film of Stephen Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd, whose trailer finally hit the internet this afternoon. So excited am I, that I’m going to do something I have never done and probably never will do again, and that is to review that very trailer (found here).
Not like, as a piece of artwork. I mean, it’s a trailer (although trailers exist that are good enough to consider as short films – viz). No, this is just one raving fanboy taking a look at what one of his former favorite directors has done, in two minutes and thirty seconds, to his favorite Broadway musical. These thoughts are presented in general order of their appearance in the trailer:
-“The Ballad of Sweeney Todd” is one of the most evocative opening pieces of music in musical history. Starting the trailer with an instrumental version would have been the easiest thing in the world. So what do they do? Some anonymous quasi-Elfman tinkling. Assholes.
-I see that Burton will be using the same trick he had in Sleepy Hollow, where the present is desaturated and bleak, and the idyllic past is all warm and golden and colorful. Well, I liked it there, I’ll like it here, I guess.
-The narrator’s voice is irritating. I can’t quite figure out why.
-If Alan Rickman has dialogue during the sentencing, does that mean “Poor Thing” was cut out? Goddammit.
-Ooh, shit, Johnny Depp’s voice sounds exactly like his Jack Sparrow accent. Ouch.
-Lord above, Burton’s characteristic production design is a good match for this story.
-Helena Bonham Carter’s boobs are getting much too much screentime. Apparently this is why Burton wanted to make Mrs. Lovett 15 years younger.
-Depp’s delivery of the spoken-sung lines in “Epiphany,” particularly “I want you bleeders” makes me shiver in antici-pation.
-His singing on “I will have vengeance / I will have salvation” is quite good (better than I would have expected), but the word “salvation” sounds like he lost the accent?
-Okay, there’s the “Ballad,” and in quite the keen orchestration.
-I am now wholly impatient to see Sacha Baron Cohen’s Pirelli singing.
-Are those brief clips from “By the Sea” and the Judge’s “Johanna” I see? Brilliant!
-Now we’re in full on “take dialogue out of context and change it’s meaning” mode. What can you do, it’s a trailer.
-I want to jump up and down like a gleeful child over Depp’s reading of “At last, my arm is complete again” – nothing like I’ve ever imagined in that moment, and yet perfect, and scary.
-Not nearly enough emphasis that it’s a musical, like they’re ashamed or frightened of the fact.
-I’m really glad they don’t give away the act-break twist. I’ve always wondered what the story would be like if you didn’t know that was coming, and now it seems like a whole generation of moviegoers will get to find out.
-I am officially much more excited than scared now. 88 days? I can manage that.