Depp and Burton's "Sweeney Todd" trailer

About 30 years ago, I took a date to go see a Broadway musical by a guy I'd never heard of -- someone named Stephen Sondheim. It was "Sweeney Todd," of course, and it thoroughly scrambled my brain and altered my understanding of what musical theater could do. (Take that, Rodgers & Hammerstein.) The sordid tale of a crazed Victorian-era barber and the wicked lady who cooks his victims into meat pies, the show was completely unique: a pitch-black slasher opera, a tour of hell with music and lyrics from heaven. If not for its very theatricality, "Sweeney Todd" would have been unbearable. Who would dare make it into a movie in which the blood, by necessity, would have to look real?

Well, yes, Tim Burton would. But as someone who loves this property -- who thinks Sondheim's one of the very few geniuses walking among us -- I've been dreading what Burton might deliver unto us this Christmastime. (Ho ho ho.) The director is himself one of the singular visionaries in the Hollywood system, but he's also maddeningly inconsistent. Has he made a movie that's great all the way through, other than "Ed Wood"?

And then there's the casting of Johnny Depp in the title part. Can the star carry a tune? It's been a big, fat question mark. More to the point, how can Depp summon the vengeful massiveness of the bulls who've played this role onstage -- Len Cariou and George Hearn, especially? (I regret I never got to see Michael Cerveris in the recent Broadway revival.)

Well, now the trailer for the new "Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street" is here, and my fears have eased somewhat. The thing looks great, full of menace and atmosphere, and while Depp is still too slight to be a juggernaut of rage, his Sweeney comes off as appropriately, lethally deranged. And Helena Bonham Carter seems right as Mrs. Lovett, too -- lacking the crazed comedy of Angela Lansbury in the original cast, but more dangerous than Patti Lupone. The trailer hits all the beats, showing off the supporting cast (Alan Rickman as the Judge, Timothy Spall as the Beadle, Sacha Baron Cohen as Pirelli -- yum), while building a nasty, alluring momentum in two and a half short minutes.

They even let you know it's a musical -- about halfway into the trailer, as if admitting a character flaw. Depp opens his mouth and uncorks the lyrics of "Epiphany" (the moment in the show when Todd's sanity finally gives way like a rotting floor), and the pieces of Burton's vision seem to snap into place.

Can the star sing? The jury's still out. Based on what we see here, Depp hits the right notes, but he doesn't appear to have the savage vocal force some of us want out of our Sweeney. Sondheim wrote a show about nihilism blotting out the sun, and the lead voice has to be undeniable. I have yet to be convinced.

Speaking of Sondheim, if you blink, you'll miss that he has anything to do with the movie. His name flashes by in the credits at the end of the trailer, but that's it. I know the movie's getting marketed to a young audience and all, but don't they understand that every high school in America has been staging "Into the Woods" for the last 15 years?