This weekend I took in Sweeney Todd staring Mr. Johnny Depp and I've been trying to form a firm opinion about it since. It's both good and bad, tacky (in the best ways possible) and polished.

Firstly, it's a musical, in essence that's the framework the entire film rests on. It's by Steven Sondheim, a 20th century American composer that I'm not all that familiar with. I had to say that as some one who does enjoy properly executed musical theatre I found the lyrics average at best and the music hardly memorable. Maybe Sondheim was going for an effect that completely passed me by but I found the libretto completely subpar.

Aside from the score, I did enjoy the story and felt it was reminiscent of Verdi's opera Rigoletto, which everyone knows at least one song from. Click here to hear the song you no doubt know. But the similarities do no continue on into the score. Rigoletto, the main character of Verdi's opera, is the hunchbacked jester to the duke of Mantua. There are many stereotypically operatic twists, but needless to say that Rigoletto ends up killing his daughter in a case of mistaken identity as he tries to exact revenge.

In Sweeney Todd we've got a main character who has returned to London after being falsely imprisoned, who's daughter is kept captive by the judge who framed him. He forms an elaborate revenge plan, assuming a new identity. The wife he believed to be dead is a half-mad begger, which is only revealed after Todd kills her, after which he is promptly killed.

The plot is an operatic stereotype but it's great. It's an operatic stereotype because it works so well.

So far we have a subpar score balanced by a fast paced and violent plot. The opera is not one of deep moral questions, it is a revenge tragedy, but the real redemption of the entire undertaking comes from the director and the cast.

Tim Burton brings his unique talents to this story with brilliant effect. I would submit that there is no deep philosophy to what Burton is doing here, but what he does is beautiful. It's bloody, it's dark...it's what we all think Victorian London as being like at it's most Gothic and terrible. The plot, as I said earlier does not complicate itself with motivations, but rather the unfolding of revenge. Burton is in his element, he makes the backdrop a beautiful dark tableau of Todd's black soul that has been consumed with revenge. It's a visual spectacle.

Now, add in Johnny Depp, someone Burton is quite comfortable collaborating with I'm certain given their previous collaborations and does a brilliant job in the lead. But the strength of the cast goes well beyond Depp, including Hellena Bonham Carter and Alan Rickman. And a special treat as Sasha Baron Cohen (Borat, Jean Girard from Ricky Bobby) appears in a minor role as an Italian dandy.

The movie is fantastically executed, but I can see going to see it preformed on broadway and being quite underwhelmed.