I thought Sweeny Todd would have been brilliant as a regular mystery style thriller without the musical numbers. It is one of those cases that I thought more actual dialog and no singing would have brought it above and beyond.
I mean you had Depp, Helena Bonham Carter, Alan Fucking Rickman, Timothy Spall, and Sacha Baron Cohen all in one movie - you could have put that list of talent in one room and had them out act each other for two hours and I would have been giving it a 10 out of 10. The songs really seemed to harm the story and cause the movie to dead-stop instead of complimenting it like musicals normally do. Cut the songs, add an hour of dialog and interesting scenes and it would have been a classic.