‘Sweeney Todd’ Trips on Script

The lady baker Mrs. Lovett manages to turn questionable ingredients--murdered Londoners, plus random floor droppings for zest--into phenomenal-selling meat pies.

The movie that tells of her unholy alliance with a vengeful barber/butcher--”The Tale of Sweeney Todd,” debuting Sunday on Showtime--is just the opposite. It is made of seemingly high-quality elements: John Schlesinger (“Midnight Cowboy”) directing Ben Kingsley (“Gandhi”), Joanna Lumley (“Absolutely Fabulous”) and Campbell Scott (CBS’ recent “The Love Letter”). Yet it falls flat because of an ill-conceived script and directorial miscalculation.

The tale of Sweeney Todd is an enduring one. Since its emergence in 1847, it has become one of the most popular plays ever in Britain, and American composer Stephen Sondheim turned it into his most diabolically clever musical.

But what Sondheim and his book writer, Hugh Wheeler, realized--and this project’s story developer, Peter Shaw, and screenwriter, Peter Buckman, don’t--is that Todd and Lovett’s motivations must be made empathetic so that viewers can, if you will pardon the expression, stomach these escapades. Where the Sondheim-Wheeler version serves up righteous indignation, twisted romance and helping upon helping of dark humor, this nonmusical one delivers merely cold-bloodedness and greed.

What little insight we get into Kingsley’s Todd comes much too late, and the characters with whom we are meant to empathize--including Scott’s macho yet sensitive bounty hunter--are underwritten.

Schlesinger only halfheartedly tries for humor (such as focusing in on the bad teeth, powdered face and fright wig that make Lumley’s Lovett look almost as howlingly unattractive as her Patsy on “Absolutely Fabulous”). Instead, he goes heavy on atmosphere, emphasizing the grime and grind of Dickens-era London: crowded streets showered by slop jars, filthy workshops presided over by cruel owners.

The result is grisly and mean, and the actors, lost, turn in some of the least distinguished work of their careers. Send this concoction back to the kitchen.

*

* “The Tale of Sweeney Todd” can be seen Sunday at 8 p.m. on cable’s Showtime. The network has rated it TV-14-SVLD (may be unsuitable for children younger than 14, with advisories for sex, violence, coarse language and suggestive dialogue).