Pun Salad

Mrs. Salad is a huge Johnny Depp fan, but not much for realistic violence and gratuitous gore. So she was ambivalent about seeing this, but finally her Depp side won out.

It's a musical tragedy. As the movie opens, Sweeney Todd is returning to London, obsessed with revenge against the powerful and villainous Judge Turpin, who wrecked his happy family years ago. He finds a willing ally in Mrs. Lovett, who needs "fresh supplies" for her pie shop.

The movie doesn't seem to have any deeper point than the usual one in tragedies: obsession is bad, and can rebound on you in ways you don't expect. There are some class-oriented noises, probably inevitable in a Victorian setting; but upper-class Judge Turpin is just as much a victim of his obsession as is Sweeney. There's also a heavy layer of general people-just-suck misanthropy.

It drags a bit in the middle, and I dozed off. I used the replay-at-1.5x trick to fill in the gaps the next day.