It's gross but will it gross? Burton and Depp's cannibal musical is an especially acquired taste - Oliver! reimagined by Eli Roth. Brave, brutal... ballads?
Revenge stories don't get a pass just because they are about revenge. If there is a genuine meaning to the legend of Benjamin Barker and what he must go through, poor Tim Burton is no closer to understanding it than his predecessors were.
Scissorhands was bright with eye-popping pastels that took on a sordid sheen; Sweeney has no such subtext: it's black, black, and gray, except when the screen floods blood red
The movie may substitute Grand Guignol for laughs at times, but it's spectacularly stylized -- each throat-slashing exceptional -- persuasively sung, and imaginatively adapted for the screen.