Many smiles and much enthusiasm and delight after a gang of us crowded into the Ritz Five to see (at long last) Mr. Smith's latest. I saw a version of the film over a year ago, and was greatly intrigued by the cuts and changes that have been implemented since then. Luckily, I'm still there, for all of seven seconds or so as Sweeney Todd, and damn masterful, or so my crowd of friends and well-wishers all assured me (of course, there was free pizza and beer at stake). And the Sweeney Todd finale (the "third-act showstopper" that KS so graciously acknowledged in his list of special thanks at the end of the credits) looked just dandy. But the film clocked in at around 140 minutes when I first saw it, and now times out at a brisk 103. Much of the storytelling that was the focus of the first third of the original film - the parts that dealt with the courtship of Gertrude Steiney (Jennifer Lopez's character) and Ollie Trinke (Mr Affleck) - has been dispatched with a few brisk strokes and a voice-over by little Raquel Castro. Gone, the talk of man-gravy and sister-sauce (don't ask); gone, the scene at Famous Deli where Gertie reveals her fondness for the musical Sweeney Todd; and gone too the final scene where ghost-mom and daughter share a spin on the dance floor at the Clamdigger Bar with the man they both love. Sic transit...
Friend-spotting was the big fun of the afternoon: who made it to the final cut? There's Linda Henderson sitting at the piano in the Cats numbers; my mother's husband Chuck Earnshaw on the stairs as Ben and Raquel make their way to the balcony for the Sweeney performance; Matthew Cloran as Anthony the Sailor, who appears onstage in the Sweeney Todd scene for a few seconds. Drucie McDaniel is clearly evident in the crowd of angry citizens at the Highlands town-hall meeting, but no longer has a spoken line as she did in the first cut I saw. And was that Ratface at the reins of the horse-drawn carriage in Central Park? We'll have to buy the DVD and do some adroit maneuvering with the pause-button to actually get a clear glimpse of my son Kerry in the crowd at the pageant; he's there and gone in an instant. Like I said, sic transit...