I just got out of the first screening of "Sweeney Todd."

The movie is good, but not great. Tim Burton adapts the Sondheim musical into a bloodbath--at one point, the person seated next to me compared it to "Eastern Promises"--though it's all in good fun. Burton's direction is solid, especially in the middle hour. He nicely marries his gruesome touch with the Broadway showstoppers ("Pirelli's Miracle Elixir," "Johanna," "By the Sea," etc), and there are times when you feel like you're watching a classic Hollywood musical. The problem is, you want the movie to have more heart--and we all know how important heart is for Oscar voters. You don't leave the theater with the sense of mourning you should for the characters.

Update: Tom O'Neil loved the movie, of course, though he's been calling "Sweeney Todd" the movie of the year before he even saw it. He's free to gush like one of Sweeney's victims, but there's some bad journalism here. O'Neil writes that at the end, people were so mesmerized they couldn't leave their seats. That's not true. The final cut is so abrupt, you're almost unsure that the movie is really over. Once the credits started rolling, people picked up their stuff and left at a regular pace. If there's further debate, I'm calling the Carpetbagger as a witness.