Sweeney Todd - The Demon Barber of Fleet Street to give it, its proper title is a film adaptation of the famous Stephen Sondheim stage play which has been adapted not only with the Sondheim's approval, but crucially with his input as well.

It's a dark, irreverent, morbid comedy musical based around the legend that there was once a barber based in London's Fleet Street who would shave his customers but also dispense with a few of them as well, cutting their throats and sending them dying into a basement below. The unlucky victims would then be processed and wrapped in pastry at Mrs Lovett's meat pie shop below. The two of them are wise to only pick on strangers to London - people with no ties for the pies - realising that people who will not be missed, will be people who won't be traced.

The story ultimately though is one in fact of unrequited love. Depp here plays Benjamin Barker, a young barber innocently enjoying the thrills of love with wife Lucy (Kelly) and baby daughter Johanna when a nasty Judge aptly named Turpin (Rickman) steals his wife after having Barker put on a prison ship to Australia on a trumped-up charge. The Judge's evil sidekick Beadle Bamford (Spall) carries out this devious plan on behalf of his master and Barker's family become the captives of the nasty Turpin, in Barker's absence.

When Barker returns some fifteen years later, aided by a young sailor Anthony (Jamie Campbell Bower), at the start of the film, Barker is set on a journey of revenge against the nasty Turpin and returning to his digs above Mrs Lovett's pie shop, he discovers the supportive Mrs Lovett has kept the tools of his trade all along, a set of razor sharp but gleaming barber shop knives which give the vengeful Barker, now to be called Sweeney Todd, some particularly dark ideas of how to use them further.

Sweeney Todd is a darkly comic musical that reunites director Tim Burton with best pal Johnny Depp in a role that almost seems like a dark variation on Edward Scissorhands. Depp's singing is passable and when he hits the high notes, you're very much taken with this character.

The opening number whilst sadly denuded of the chorus that would be found in the play, is particularly striking as the demonic vengeful barber returns to the city he knew so well. Also good is Tim Burton's wife Helena Bonham Carter who seems born for the part of the wacky Mrs Lovett.

If you don't like the sight of blood, many scenes of throats being cut might not be up your street and personally I might have preferred a few less scenes of bodies heading down a fatal chute and more humour steered around the overnight success of Mrs Lovett's curiously 'flavoursome' pies.

But that aside, Sweeney Todd succeeds in bringing a well-known musical to the big screen. It seems entirely appropriate that it's in the hands of Tim Burton and it's pleasing that Sondheim has not only given the project his blessing but also had input in it as well.