Dear Tim Burton...

Stop.

Just... stop.


I had the misfortune of seeing his latest crapfest, Sweeny Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, a few months ago, but I hadn't written anything about it until now because, frankly, that part of the brain that blocks out traumatic events like your uncle diddling you when you were five kicked into gear and I forgot about it, until I saw something about it the other day and slowly, my memories began to return; and even then, I had to undertake intense psychiatric therapy in order to come to grips with what I had seen, move past it, and gain strength enough to write about it. All in the form of an '80s-style rock montage set to Paul Engemann's "Push It To The Limit", because that's how I roll.

I digress.

I sat there with several friends and we watched the film. Don't get me wrong, the singing was fair and creative, but oh how the plot did fail. From what little I could glean from the nearly impossible-to-follow flow of plot that burst into song every three-point-five seconds, I had publicly and accurately guessed the plot, which resulted in a thankful fast-forwarding through what looked like a dull, repetitive queue of "sing, kill, cook, sing, kill, cook, sing, sing , cook, kill(look, they switched it up! It's like a whole new film now!)", there might have been a tad bit of plot development and character growth in there somewhere. Maybe it took place during all the killing, cooking, and singing; I couldn't be bothered to watch. I'm not a huge fan of musicals in general, but I can tell a good one when I see one, and I did not see one there. Any sort of drama or tension or, frankly, any sort of attention-holding device was immediately destroyed by the silly, slapstick, tongue-in-cheek song that they would inevitably launch into the moment such a feeling would usually have set in.

Aside from the shallow plot and poor delivery of said plot, there was that disgusting Tim Burton style that, understandably, populates almost every one of his films like a terminal disease, and this time he decided to treat us to a lovely Victorian setting, again, understandable, but he set it in front of a carnival mirror and turned it from credible to pandering. Most of the film is a brilliant, eye-pleasing pallet of vomiticious monochromacity, save the odd colour here and there, and of course, the candied-apple-red blood that ran like a waterfall from thankfully every character introduced (except the two who I forget, and the hero of the film, the little boy), the fact that he could touch his blade to all manner of things, but the second it touched a neck, hoo boy, it was like the media depiction of a katana, right through with no effort.

And when I say pandering, I mean it. This film is right in the wheelhouse of the retarded kids I pass in the Hot Topic with the piercings and tattoos and chains and all-black with the hair down over one eye and the tonnes of make-up. The ones who write poetry and mope about relationships on Myspace and threaten to kill themselves, only succeeding accidentally, thus making the rest of their emo friends else shit themselves feeling bad about it. Yes, the emo crowd that I spend so much time loving in my writings. If this isn't a film custom made for these drooling simpletons, then Disney's 101 Dalmatians wasn't made for little kids. This is exactly the kind of film that these morons would equate with good, simply because it has emo-hero Johnny Depp in it, and uses that lovely, run-down, broken, tattered, Victorian Gothic style these subhumans equate with orgasmically amazing. Conversely, these are the people who can't sit through a real film for more than five minutes before walking out, claiming that it was "too long", and "wasn't cool". It's okay, though, they're only uncultured. It's really a lot like asking a five year-old his favourite food, of course it'll be pepperoni and cheese on medium crust from Pizza Hut with a Mountain Dew or Sunny Delight, because they haven't matured enough to like pheasant-under-glass and a glass of Bordeaux. At the same time, though, you'll find an adult who still goes for the Pizza Hut and Sunny D, at which point you have to consider them mentally retarded. The same is true for movies of this type.

And, sadly, as I was looking up Burton and his shoddy films up on IMDb, I notice he's got remakes of Alice in Wonderland and rumours of The Wizard of Oz lined up. Fantastic. I expect to see a lot darker, more gothy, more pandering versions of these films (that these people seem to flock to for some unknown to me reason) that I will hear endless praise for from every idiot wannabe goth and emo that populate the world around me.

Just what we all need.