Film Reviews
"At last, my arm is complete again." Sweeney Todd as he admires one of his efficient razors after a long absence.
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User Reviews
14 December 2007 | by John DeSando ([email protected]) (Columbus, Ohio) – See all my reviews
"At last, my arm is complete again." Sweeney Todd as he admires one of his efficient razors
after a long absence.
I'm not sure Tim Burton's Sweeney Todd is "grand," but I'm confident it's in the best Grand
Guignol tradition of sensational stage horror given its name from that little theater in early
20th century Paris that specialized in sensationally ghoulish productions. I am also sure that
no one in film is better able to play the titular butcher than the shape-shifting, ever-naughty
Johnny Depp.
The opening song "No Place Like London" hints to Anglophiles like me that it won't be my
usual tour of West End theaters, rather a seedy, dangerous place where Mac the Knife would
be more at home. Throughout the musical, Steven Sondheim's lyrics expressively revel in
the amoral, throat-slicing world that Sweeney and his adoring meatpie lady, Nellie Lovett
(Helena Bonham-Carter), wallow in as he prepares to take revenge on the equally amoral
Judge Turpin (Alan Rickman), who dispatched Todd to prison early on to get his beautiful
young wife. Hence Sweeney's revenge inclination.
Sweeney's lyric best expresses the wildly murderous world, hardly the usual province of
musicals: "Alright! You, Sir?/No one's in the chair come on, come on/Sweeney's waiting/I
want you bleeders./You sir! Too sir?/Welcome to the grave./I will have vengeance./I will
have salvation . . . ." Yes, it's Sleepy-Hollow, Corpse-Bride Tim Burton's movie with blood
spouting like red paint from a pressure gun contrasting the somber, almost black and white
underside of London. When one of the children bites into a pie with a finger in it (shades of
our contemporary law suits!), the audience doesn't even gasp, given the omnipresence of
bloody bodies.
There is no more interesting musical this year, even considering the enchanting Once. In the
end, it is unsettling, unsavory, and unusual. Burton does better than anyone else in
juxtaposing horror with innocence.
Very embarassing..., 30 April 2004
Author:
Vincent Tigréat from Paris
When it come to commenting & criticising movies, I can be quite a pain in the arse... and I might be one
just once more. I got to watch this movie for a preview screening [lucky me!] but quite soon felt like
leaving the theater.
Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed watching LE FABULEUX DESTIN D'AMELIE POULAIN [as we call it in
here]. I enjoyed it despite all the tiny points I had against it. I knew pretty much from the start that the
director was pulling huge strings to get maximum audience support, using ridiculous parisian tourist
clichés & basic ALLY-McBEAL-style empathy tricks. The point is that despite all these lame cunning tricks
and the basic-est plot, Jean-Pierre Jeunet is a director with a vision plus obvious storytelling &
cinematographic skills [and he gets great artistic/technical staff & inspired actors to work along].
None of this can be said of Yann Samuell, so just forget about the "visionnary mind" comment in the IMDB
tagline. When AMELIE evolved in an univese of her own, JEUX D'ENFANTS just feels like a patchwork,
sequences pasted one after another with as much visual coherence as a 15 minutes commercial break.
Some parts get the right feeling [basically the first part with the school bus] but most don't [children's
fantasy looking like cheap kids shows on TV, the hospital emergency entrance scene that just feels like
another power-car expensive TV advert...]. So basically, forget about the director.
When it comes to the story, it ain't much better... If the daring game makes sense, I really don't believe in
the love story & what could have been a romantic JULES & JIM feeling in the script turns into a pretty
anti-climactic ending. Not even mentionning the cheap attempt to show the characters growing up from
teenagers to thirtysometing adults, using pretty much unchanged actors.
Now, when it comes to the acting parts, I can't really get in the mood to blame the cast. I mean, Marion
Cotillard is definetely a decent actress. Too bad we mostly saw her in second-rate flicks [France's most
embarassing TAXI series... basically what you'd get if Jean-Claude Van Damme directed The Italian Job's
remake] but I sincerely believe she's talented & also have no doubt about Guillaume Cannet [forget about
the lame THE BEACH, he's acted in & also directed much better movies]. In the end, they're not doing
bad but you don't really believe in their story. So, once more, I think I'll blame everything on the director's
absence of actor-management skills & bad editing sense...
That is, if I was gentle enough to spare the poor boy that plays Guillaume Canet's character aged 8.
Honestly, I hope dubbing will spare foreign audience the embarassment of what was the most artificial
acting experience I've seen in years. In mean, the kid sounds even less natural than 1950's commercials
characters. Basically, the child can't play, tries much too hard to sound cute... in the end, you're just
checking your backpack in case you didn't leave your flame-thrower home.
To sum things up, this movie is obviously a product generated to aim at AMELIE's audience BUT it
doesn't have it's good storytelling or visual charm. Do not waste money on this, there are much better
french movies being exported, much better ones to get on DVD too [including real tasty romantic love
stories].
14 December 2007 | by John DeSando ([email protected]) (Columbus, Ohio) – See all my reviews
"At last, my arm is complete again." Sweeney Todd as he admires one of his efficient razors
after a long absence.
I'm not sure Tim Burton's Sweeney Todd is "grand," but I'm confident it's in the best Grand
Guignol tradition of sensational stage horror given its name from that little theater in early
20th century Paris that specialized in sensationally ghoulish productions. I am also sure that
no one in film is better able to play the titular butcher than the shape-shifting, ever-naughty
Johnny Depp.
The opening song "No Place Like London" hints to Anglophiles like me that it won't be my
usual tour of West End theaters, rather a seedy, dangerous place where Mac the Knife would
be more at home. Throughout the musical, Steven Sondheim's lyrics expressively revel in
the amoral, throat-slicing world that Sweeney and his adoring meatpie lady, Nellie Lovett
(Helena Bonham-Carter), wallow in as he prepares to take revenge on the equally amoral
Judge Turpin (Alan Rickman), who dispatched Todd to prison early on to get his beautiful
young wife. Hence Sweeney's revenge inclination.
Sweeney's lyric best expresses the wildly murderous world, hardly the usual province of
musicals: "Alright! You, Sir?/No one's in the chair come on, come on/Sweeney's waiting/I
want you bleeders./You sir! Too sir?/Welcome to the grave./I will have vengeance./I will
have salvation . . . ." Yes, it's Sleepy-Hollow, Corpse-Bride Tim Burton's movie with blood
spouting like red paint from a pressure gun contrasting the somber, almost black and white
underside of London. When one of the children bites into a pie with a finger in it (shades of
our contemporary law suits!), the audience doesn't even gasp, given the omnipresence of
bloody bodies.
There is no more interesting musical this year, even considering the enchanting Once. In the
end, it is unsettling, unsavory, and unusual. Burton does better than anyone else in
juxtaposing horror with innocence.
Very embarassing..., 30 April 2004
Author:
Vincent Tigréat from Paris
When it come to commenting & criticising movies, I can be quite a pain in the arse... and I might be one
just once more. I got to watch this movie for a preview screening [lucky me!] but quite soon felt like
leaving the theater.
Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed watching LE FABULEUX DESTIN D'AMELIE POULAIN [as we call it in
here]. I enjoyed it despite all the tiny points I had against it. I knew pretty much from the start that the
director was pulling huge strings to get maximum audience support, using ridiculous parisian tourist
clichés & basic ALLY-McBEAL-style empathy tricks. The point is that despite all these lame cunning tricks
and the basic-est plot, Jean-Pierre Jeunet is a director with a vision plus obvious storytelling &
cinematographic skills [and he gets great artistic/technical staff & inspired actors to work along].
None of this can be said of Yann Samuell, so just forget about the "visionnary mind" comment in the IMDB
tagline. When AMELIE evolved in an univese of her own, JEUX D'ENFANTS just feels like a patchwork,
sequences pasted one after another with as much visual coherence as a 15 minutes commercial break.
Some parts get the right feeling [basically the first part with the school bus] but most don't [children's
fantasy looking like cheap kids shows on TV, the hospital emergency entrance scene that just feels like
another power-car expensive TV advert...]. So basically, forget about the director.
When it comes to the story, it ain't much better... If the daring game makes sense, I really don't believe in
the love story & what could have been a romantic JULES & JIM feeling in the script turns into a pretty
anti-climactic ending. Not even mentionning the cheap attempt to show the characters growing up from
teenagers to thirtysometing adults, using pretty much unchanged actors.
Now, when it comes to the acting parts, I can't really get in the mood to blame the cast. I mean, Marion
Cotillard is definetely a decent actress. Too bad we mostly saw her in second-rate flicks [France's most
embarassing TAXI series... basically what you'd get if Jean-Claude Van Damme directed The Italian Job's
remake] but I sincerely believe she's talented & also have no doubt about Guillaume Cannet [forget about
the lame THE BEACH, he's acted in & also directed much better movies]. In the end, they're not doing
bad but you don't really believe in their story. So, once more, I think I'll blame everything on the director's
absence of actor-management skills & bad editing sense...
That is, if I was gentle enough to spare the poor boy that plays Guillaume Canet's character aged 8.
Honestly, I hope dubbing will spare foreign audience the embarassment of what was the most artificial
acting experience I've seen in years. In mean, the kid sounds even less natural than 1950's commercials
characters. Basically, the child can't play, tries much too hard to sound cute... in the end, you're just
checking your backpack in case you didn't leave your flame-thrower home.
To sum things up, this movie is obviously a product generated to aim at AMELIE's audience BUT it
doesn't have it's good storytelling or visual charm. Do not waste money on this, there are much better
french movies being exported, much better ones to get on DVD too [including real tasty romantic love
stories].
