Dir: Tim Burton.
Here is an old classic by a well versed master of the genre with a famed actor of considerable repute and a lot of really talented camera people, set designers and art direction. The ambience of old London is in place, the sense of Victorian squalor has been evoked and the costumes are tip top.
So why is this film so bad?
Because they keep singing awful songs! Why? Why? Why? The actors don't sound good and the songs are just awful because they are so predictable. It seems stage musicals always fall back on tuneless monologues interspersed with a catchy chorus. Tim Burton didn't bother to change this so Depp would be droning along with either Rickman or Bonham Carter and they'd sound like amateurs in a town hall pantomime production. This isn't meant to be a reflection on the merits of amateur theatrics, which I'm sure are the utmost pinnacle of performance for amateur actors, but this is a Tim Burton film with a massive budget, a plethora of world class actors and a fantastic story to work with. What could possibly go wrong?
It hit rock bottom when the little kid started singing. Then the mediocrity was complete. It wasn't that he had a bad voice. It was just that he looked and sounded like a child in a childrens school play. I'm sure his family would have had tears of joy in their eyes at his performance and quite rightly so for he had a sweet voice, but for me, it was an effort of will (and a desire to see any digital matte paintings that might crop up along the way) to keep going to the end of the film. I've never come across such a deliberate juxtaposition of the mundane with the sublime.
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