Stylish as hell and almost as bloody, the latest Burton/Depp collaboration is a macabre musical masterpiece. That’s the good news. The bad news is that unless you’re among that rare group of people that love both slash-gore-horror flicks and musicals, you’re going to have a problem with it.
Benjamin Barker (Depp), a dashing young barber with a beautiful blonde wife and fluffy-haired newborn, is falsely convicted by a jealous judge. He’s duly deported to foreign lands and his daughter adopted/abducted by the evil lawmaker (another star-toppling turn from serial scene-stealer Alan Rickman).
A couple of years later, he comes back to London, and he’s sporting a new look, a new name, and a new lust for vengeance. He soon teams up with pie-maker Helena Bonham-Carter (the director’s wife and muse) – she needs pie-meat, he needs his blood lust satisfying, and so they team up and kill two birds with one stone. Or, more accurately, a lot of people with one razor - between songs, and sometimes during them.
The look of the film is vintage Burton, and the most accomplished work he’s produced to date. His gothic whims are indulged and no expense spared. Sets are exquisitely grimy and each crease, crack and wrinkle has been neatly thought through. Ultimately though, the concept doesn’t hold water. There’s one audience for the songs and another for the rest. The way I see it, Burton’s clearly surrounded by Yes Men, especially when it comes to projects with Edward Chocolate-hands (whose singing, by the way is okay, but from the moment you realise it sounds like a mediocre Bowie impression – and that’s fairly early on – loses its credibility.) Frankly this 18-rated, all singing all-dancing gothic slashical should never have been green-lit.
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