Mrs. Lovett was perfectly sane, but had a crush on Benjamin Barker/Sweeney from before he got shipped off. And yes, it is her idea to use the no-longer-needed meat suit for her pies.fantine33 wrote:I've only seen parts of it on channels like PBS (I seem to recall Angela Lansbury on a bicycle), so I probably have this wrong. But wasn't Mrs. Lovett supposed to be crazy and she didn't really know what was going on at first? Helena Bonham Carter didn't seem crazy and it was sort of all her idea to make with the Farmer Vincent fritters.
Pirelli is just overconfident that he'll win the competition, and so takes it easy and yacks about his prowess. And Sweeney wants to lull Turpin into complacency, so it'll be easy to slice and dice, er, grind him.My sister thought they could have accomplished a lot more without the singing, but she still liked it. Although I knew it was a musical going in, I could see her point. All I kept thinking during Borat's song was "Dude, you'd have a better shot at winning this contest if you wouldn't stop and sing an aria between each stroke." Same way with Alan Rickman, just slice him, get on with it and then you can carry on about all the pretty women doing nothing.
The whole thing is based on a story in the British "penny dreadfuls" back in the late 1800's. I don't know if the expositions were there to begin with, but they're similar to the comic book villains who always have to expound on their greatness, thereby letting the superhero get free of their traps and clobber them.
