At the Kansas City Star, Robert W. Butler brings up an issue that I’ve been thinking about a lot: with music minimized in the massive TV campaign behind Sweeney Todd (see a totally music-free spot above), aren’t they worried that that millions of Jack Sparrow fans will swarm the theaters, only march out angrily when the star breaks into song? According to Butler, we’d be naive to expect anything else:
Today???s kids are crazy about Johnny Depp and horror, and the Warner marketing folk have played to those strengths, emphasizing that in the R-rated Sweeney Todd Depp plays a bleakly amusing killer, a nut job with a straight razor. At the same time the ads de-emphasize the film???s musical origins…Lest I come off as terribly cynical about this, let me state right now that I approve of the Warner ad campaign. That???s because I think Sweeney Todd is a brilliant accomplishment that deserves to be seen by as many people as possible. And if you???ve got to con the kiddies into buying a ticket, that???s fine with me.
“Con the kiddies,” huh? Without even broaching the topic of a studio blatantly trying to sell an R-rated film to the under 17s (not to mention Butler’s presumption of knowledge about “today’s kids”), the real dishonesty here goes beyond the fact that the distributors are not being totally forthcoming about the fact that 90 percent of this story is told in song. The real lie: Sweeney Todd is not just a musical. It’s very literally your parents’ musical.
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