simhedges

Beautifully made, excellent effects (both visual and practical) and design, enjoyable acting (especially from 'Susan'). The plot was good, once it got going. And there's the rub - it was just horrendously long and draggy at the start. It would have benefited immeasurably from having a good hour cut from the running time: 4 hours was too long.

That's really all I wanted to say, but as IMDb insists I write more (ot it won't let me submit my perfectly reasonable comment), I'll also add that I very much liked Death's head being an immobile skull rather than being animated. I even liked the jaw not working. And I liked the eyes. The Hogs were most enjoyable. I suspect the narrator was Joss Ackland (Ridcully would be an appropriate narrator), though it may be have been Ian Richardson. The ending was good, and I liked the speech about the little lies and big lies.

This was a reasonable production of an excellent musical, but I recommend the George Hearn / Angela Lansbury version every time.

In a previous comment, alan_cricketman4 from Belfast UK, states: "I can understand producers using artistic licence and having to cut details and chronologically alter events etc., but to change the facts of such a well known and well documented case is just downright silly. I suggest that very little research has been applied here (by producers and reviewers alike) and a good website to browse, and learn further details on the case, is "Court TV CRIME LIBRARY"."

I fact, Sweeney Todd was universally accepted to be an 'urban myth' up to about 1993, due to the lack of other evidence. In 1993, a new book, was published. Of this book, Wikipedia says:

"In his 1993 book Sweeney Todd: The Real Story of the Demon Barber of Fleet, the horror and crime story writer Peter Haining argues that Sweeney Todd was a historical figure who committed his crimes around 1800. However, other researchers who have researched his citations find nothing in these sources to back up what Haining claims they said".

I realise that Wikipedia is not always entirely accurate, but I think it is fair to say that what Mr Haining has done is researched a theory about the origin of Sweeney Todd, which is worthy of consideration, but far from accepted historical truth.

In another comment in this movie, someone said:

"In a movie supposed to be from the middle age you should not use music made hundreds of years forward in time. "lowrider" and "we will rock you" should not have been in this movie."

But I assume that this person would have been happy with standard 'classical' movie music as was used in, say, "The Lion in Winter" or "Becket" or "El Cid". Do people complain about the Korngold score for 'Robin Hood' because it is anachronistic? No. But it is highly anachronistic - someone from the Middle Ages would be as likely to find 'Robin Hood' as unintelligible as 'We Will Rock You' - or possibly more so.

I thought that the use of modern rock music and football chants to be inspired and funny; and I found the movie overall to be quite enjoyable.