Paint Your Wagon, Grease, Can't Stop The Music, even Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club band were sheer works of genius and considerably more entertaining than "Sweeney Todd, The Demon Barber of Fleet Street" It's more than just bad songs. The songs are painfully sung, even with heavy hitters such as Angela Lansbury and George Hearn.

The DVD is just a filming of the play. Bad idea. When you go to a play, there are different expectations than seeing a movie. For one thing the sound quality sucks eggs. Another problem: no scenery, no fixed storefront. The rolling sets are simply shoved around on stage by propsmen.

Very distracting and makes it hard to get into the story. And the hamhanded acting is expected in a play, but not when you are sitting in front of the TV. Then you are reminded just how awful the acting is in most plays.

But the worst thing about this play is that they have completely changed the story. They simply trashed the real story, which is a true one.
Sweeney Todd was a nasty creature who grew up at the beginnings of England's Industrial Revolution—an extremely bleak time and place. His parents both worked and drank themselves to death. He was thrown in prison for a minor offence and learned to be a barber in prison. When he got out, he was one mean son-of-a-bitch.

Todd set up shop on Fleet Street, which happened to be situated over a series of secret underground tunnels. Nobody knows how and when he came up with the idea of flinging his customers through a trap door behind the barber's chair, sending the guys tumbling 30 feet to the brick floor of the tunnel. But he did. And he killed 160-210 men, from circa 1790-1804, almost all sailors, because he figured nobody would miss them.

Even more awful was the fact that a helpful meat pie lady thought up the idea of baking the victims in her pies. They got caught by the authorities in 1805. This is documented fact because in England's archives are the details of the trial and execution of Todd. His meat pie girlfriend poisoned herself in prison before she could be executed.

This play takes the story to 1846, adds a daughter for Todd who didn't exist and an imaginary story about a corrupt judge who holds the poor daughter in domestic servitude and throws in an imaginary battle of barbers' wits with an Italian barber who also sold hair growing products.
This play won 8 Tonys and 3 Emmys.

This proves to me that critics are all on the take.