(Maybe it's more a prequel to BEETLEJUICE, but I'm a '"method"-caster' ... Johnny Depp is Tim Burton's 'Edward Scissorhands,' so that creation of an old recluse 'should've been' {wioll haven be ... whatever) modeled on the body of the character Johnny Depp plays in this film.)

Yes, Johnny Depp (another favorite son of Tim Burton) plays another master-of-pointy-things in Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street.

If you're worried that I'll 'ruin the suspense' for you, stop reading this and go to a library; this story is about as old as any other story you can find there (not 'old' in a "ready to be put to final rest"-way, but in a good "steady as the river runs"-way).

First, there's the fact that it's a musical: since I didn't know that before I went in, something in the back of my mind was moaning, "Awwh man! I came for a hard-hitting story; this is prob`ly gonna be tasteless jingles all the way through!"

I can't say for-sure whether or not Tim Burton had to 'de-camp' Stephen Sondheim's style (I don't follow careers too closely), but the dark tones in setting and -make-up–plus the blimey British accents–saved Sweeney Todd from the ice-cream vendors' song-list ... that, and the fact that most of the songs (like the surrounding movie) were about cheating, pain, murder, revenge, unwitting cannibalism and regret-of-beauty-lost.

The actors all gave their standard (above-par) performances; even Helena Bonham Carter, who even got to play her usual character! That's right, all Helena Bonham Carter's roles are the same; a slightly demented girl with distracting cleavage.

The only damper on the cast was the boy who Helena and Sweeney temporarily adopted: he sang like he was performing in a choir (rather than 'communicating with the other characters').

I think I've left out enough of the story for the ending to "grab you" like those types of endings always should. What types? Well, my photographer friend compared the movie to The Real Dracula (in which Vlad Dracul hears that some Turks killed his lover, goes on a Turk-killing rampage {regardless of the given Turks' guilt} and dies with the realization that his lover-never died but -was one of the Turks he killed).

I personally compared the end to Romeo and Juliet (in which one drinks a sub-poison to fool the authorities, is discovered- and thought dead-by the other who thus kills himself, who is found dead by the first who kills herself). I'm sorta 'spoiling' it as another "everybody dies"-love-story, but someone stays alive!