Like the Reese's Peanut Butter Cups commercials showing how chocolate and peanut butter crash together to create a great candy, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street is a demonstration of a match made in heaven. It's as if Stephen Sondheim's musical was meant to be a Tim Burton movie all along. The dark, macabre story works in perfect harmony with Burton's style; and Burton, to his credit, adapts to the musical form quite well.

In particular, the story goes right in line with Burton's affinity for the misfit outsider who, by his or her nature, can never fit in with the crowd. This describes Sweeney Todd (Johnny Depp), and then some. The former barber has just returned from an unjust prison sentence, and now seeks revenge on the evil Judge Turpin (Alan Rickman) who put him there, keeping him apart from his beautiful lover, a woman Turpin coveted. But the returning man is not the same one who left; with his pale face and wild hair featuring a shock of white, he's unrecognizable now -- and much more of a fright. We soon see he's adopted murderous tendencies, as he and his new associate, Mrs. Lovett (Helena Bonham Carter), soon find a rather cavalier way of turning homocide into a business.

Todd's rage against Turpin finds a way to extend itself to the public at large. This kind of story is ripe with a deep mistrust of the mainstream, and with a reclusive protagonist so willing to play executioner, the material actually tingles with real danger. Burton picks up on this wavelength and depicts Todd's murders with morbid glee -- he never cuts (pun not intended) away from a neck-slicing; blood sprays like it's coming from a sprinkler; and the bodies are always shown dropping headfirst through a trap door to the basement. And I mean always. I don't think there's one victim of the barber's chair we don't see hitting the ground two stories down. That's a sick sense of humor, and it's one a misfit would love.

Burton pays less attention to the play's theme of capitalism = cannibalism, allowing that part to play itself out in the funny, black way it was written. He's much more interested in the story's second main misfit, Mrs. Lovett, whom Bonham Carter instills with as much pathos as one can in an outwardly unsavory character. The longing she has for Todd is characteristic of Burton's linking of outcasts with loneliness and secret desires. Todd himself is less sympathetic, hellbent on his revenge, with Depp adopting mainly only one facial expression -- a constant glower.

Most of the cast is up to the task, including Rickman, Timothy Spall, and Sacha Baron Cohen in a brief scene-stealing part. Three youngsters -- Jamie Campbell Bower, Jayne Wisener, and Ed Sanders -- play hopefuls, their innocence contrasted with the depravity of their elders. This contrast in the story is simple, with the idea that corruption of the soul is inevitable and tragic. The singing is generally well-done all around, with Bonham Carter feeling the most natural -- once again, this may also have to do with Burton favoring her character.

For what Sweeney Todd chooses to emphasize more or emphasize less, I'm not sure whether that can be chalked up to the source material or director's decisions, but the overall effect is one of seeing Burton completely in his element. That the characters are constantly singing only seems to augment his flair. Burton has always been stylish and showy, and here he fits entirely with this more operatic of musical shows. Even if I have some problems getting fully into the story -- I wonder to myself how much I would enjoy the show on stage if I saw it -- I can still say with confidence that, for directing the movie, no better man could've been hired for the job.

(Released by DreamWorks Pictures and rated "R" for graphic bloody violence.)

Review also posted at www.windowtothemovies.com.