Into the Woods

Greetings again from the darkness. It's a musical, but not a typical musical. It's a fairy tale, but not a typical fairy tale. It's funny, but not a typical comedy. It's a bit frightening, but not a typical monster film. It's filled with lessons of morality and responsibility, but certainly not a typical parable. In fact, there is nothing typical about director Rob Marshall's (Oscar winner for Chicago) screen adaptation of the smash Broadway hit from Stephen Sondheim and James Lupine.

The story revolves around 4 classic Fairy Tales: Little Red Riding Hood, Jack and the Beanstalk, Rapunzel, and Cinderella, in a style much more similar in tone to the edgy Brothers Grimm, than the cuddly Walt Disney traditionals. These four are intertwined with the saga of a baker (James Cordon) and his wife (Emily Blunt) who discover they have been unable to have children due to a long ago spell cast by a wicked witch (Meryl Streep). With a secret agenda, the witch offers the couple a way to break the spell, and that's what ties-in the four tales and provides a reason for adventure and song.

Filmed seamlessly between an elaborate sound stage and a couple of park locations, the film has a dark and eerie feel to it that's probably too intense for younger children. And much of the dialogue and lyrics is aimed directly at adults and will be a blur to kids. Additionally, in typical Sondheim fashion, the songs aren't catchy and melodic in the manner of most movie musicals … instead the lyrics propel the story and help shape the characters. Oh, and by the way, don't expect any fancy dance sequences – this is pretty serious stuff with plenty of angst amongst the characters.

Ms. Streep is extraordinary as the witch (both nasty and beautiful) and does a terrific job with her three main songs. She is especially fun in her entrances and exits, and while wearing the most impactful of all the costumes. Emily Blunt also handles her vocals very well and offers up some of the film's most witty dialogue. Chris Pine (as the Prince) is flat out hilarious, and with a twinkle in his eye, spouts lines such as "I was raised to be charming, not sincere". He also shares the screen with Billy Magnussen (playing the younger brother) in the most audacious of the musical numbers, "Agony". As Cinderella, Anna Kendrick once again proves she is an exceptionally talented singer, and James Cordon anchors the production as the nice guy village baker we are rooting for.

In supporting roles, we have a devilish Johnny Depp whose screen time as the Big Bad Wolf is quite limited, and a perfectly cast Christine Baranski as the evil step-mother in cahoots with her non-Cinderella daughters played by Lucy Punch and Tammy Blanchard. Lilla Crawford is Little Red Riding Hood, and her young age snuffs out much of the innuendo that the Wolf scenes should have provided, and takes the edge off the song "I Know Things Now". Daniel Huddlestone is an energetic Jack, and dependable Tracey Ullman plays his frustrated mom. MacKenzie Mauzy captures the awakening of Rapunzel, while Frances de la Tour frightens everyone involved as the agitated (for good reason) Lady Giant.

Unconventional is the best description of this production, and there is a group of viewers who will be totally captivated by it, while a much larger group will probably find it too dark and bleak, and lacking the easy charm we have come to expect from movie musicals. However, for those of us in the first group, we will be totally enchanted by the characters, story lines, wry humor, costumes, sets, and songs.

I love Stephen Sondheim's musical classic Into The Woods, so I was more than excited to see Rob Marshall's new motion picture adaptation. Not only is Into The Woods one of my favorite musicals, but Rob Marshall was the director who brought Kander & Ebb's Chicago to the big screen in 2002 – an effort which resulted in the first musical to win the Best Picture Oscar since 1968! In fact, since Baz Luhrmann's Moulin Rouge update in 2001, several major musicals have been successfully adapted to the big screen – including Chicago, Dreamgirls, and the unfairly criticized Les Miserables just two years ago.

I hate to say it, but Into The Woods does not fall into this category. I found the film dreary, draggy, and quite frankly, boring. How can this be? It's the same dialogue, the same music, the same set, and the same costumes as we see on stage. But therein lay the problem. On stage, set designers create "the woods," and the actors move in and out of these woods. We use our imagination to pretend the woods are larger than what we see on stage. Here, the woods are huge. After all, these are the movies. Unfortunately, the woods all look the same. Marshall may as well have filmed a stage performance. Furthermore, the sky is always cloudy, giving the picture a dirty, dingy feel.

Into these woods, several classic stories interconnect, including Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood, Jack & The Beanstalk, and Rapunzel. Tying all the stories together is the story of a baker and his wife, who are unable to conceive a child due to a curse placed on them by the witch who lives next door. On stage, characters from the various fairy tales bump into one another in hilarious fashion, and eventually all the loose ends are wrapped up and most of the characters live happily ever after.

But the film has one major flaw, and that is that the loose ends are tied up too soon. The sun finally shines on Cinderella's wedding day, as all the townsfolk join the celebration. I looked at my watch and realized we were only an hour Into The Woods, causing me to wonder what director Rob Marshall was going to do with the rest of the movie. On stage, Cinderella's wedding is merely a formality – a necessary conclusion to the story we all know, but certainly not the end of the musical. Here, Marshall gives the wedding scene such heft – and differentiates it from the previous hour's worth of material – that we feel like it's time to get up and leave.

At this point, the film version goes awry. The players begin behaving out of character for reasons never explained. For instance, how could the handsome prince consider Cinderella the love of his life one day, and then cheat on her the next? Why does Jack's mother die? (Her death is one of the funniest scenes on stage. Here, it happens so quickly, I wasn't even sure if she had died or not. And Jack's demeanor doesn't change one iota.) Another problem is Stephen Sondheim himself. You see, Sondheim is a lyricist. When he wrote the lyrics for Leonard Bernstein's West Side Story, the result was one of the best stage and screen musicals of all time. But when Sondheim writes his own melodies, the result is often wordy, tuneless ditties you won't remember two minutes after leaving the theatre. Again, on stage this is no big deal. In fact, it almost accentuates the material to feature the characters speaking and singing in similar speech patterns. But on screen, I had that, "Not another song!" feeling all through the third act – the way I did with Barbra Streisand's Yentl back in 1983.

I certainly can't knock the performances, although Anna Kendrick's remarkable turn as Cinderella is the only one that stands out from the rest. Her character seems genuine, and she gives Cinderella a few new dimensions, rather than simply fulfilling the role we think we know from the fairy tale. Three-time Oscar winner Meryl Streep has been nominated for another Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her role as the witch. She's fine, but she won't win. I could name at least a dozen Streep performances better than this one.

It's a disappointment to me that Into The Woods didn't adapt better to the big screen. That makes three films this season that I really wanted to like, and was disappointed at the outcome – Birdman, Inherent Vice, and now Into The Woods. Throughout the course of motion picture history, it often seems as though the best musicals are those written directly for the screen, such as Singin' In The Rain or Mary Poppins. Adapting material from another source is always risky. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. As I've thought more about Into The Woods, I wonder if this isn't one of those musicals that simply wasn't meant to adapt to the screen. Remember Richard Attenborough's inexcusable A Chorus Line? That's another great, intimate show that simply doesn't work on the large easel of the motion picture screen. I fear that's what we have here with Into The Woods.

Granted, the film was misleadingly advertised(where I came from though the advertising made it very clear that it was a musical) for some people who clearly had no prior knowledge of the source material and, as is apparent in a lot of the reviews here, Stephen Sondheim's music is not for all tastes, so the dislike is understandable. But as someone who's a fan of musicals, one of those who likes Sondheim, who considers Into the Woods as one of his best and as a fan of the production with Bernadette Peters, while it has its problems to me this film was enjoyable. While as said before the dislike is understandable I do think the amount of hatred it's gotten is over-the-top(this is nowhere near the worst movie ever by any stretch of the imagination) and unfair(mostly from people who didn't know it was a musical or those who have a stereotypical view as to what a Disney film should be like).

Into the Woods has a very problematic second half, not all of it is so but a lot of it is, enough to make it an issue. The first half was witty, upbeat, colourful and mostly close to the story of the musical, but the second half slackens in pace a little and the tone shifts rather discordantly to something darker and less cohesive due to cutting things that would have made it make more sense. The second act of Into the Woods is dark in the first place(and there are people who do find the second act heavy for them) but not to this extent, never did it feel like two different shows. It also did a much better job balancing any tone shifts, and is funnier and more poignant than in the film version. Agony is hilarious and Children Will Listen evokes a lot of pathos here so the film is not devoid of those qualities, just that they're stronger in the musical, and those qualities would have come stronger here if the second Agony and No More were kept intact. Lilla Crawford is also obnoxiously shrill and a complete blank expressions-wise as Little Red Riding Hood.

On the other hand, Into the Woods is great-looking stuff, loved the beautiful but creepy and colourful but foreboding woods setting as well as the cinematography which was a delicious mix of dream-like and macabre. Sondheim's music here has been criticised for being forgettable and samey, criticisms that I do not agree with at all, if anything does repeat itself it's called a motif which Sondheim uses a lot. The score is rousing, beautiful and haunting and of the songs The Last Midnight, Agony and Children Will Listen particularly stand out here, which all have completely different moods to one another. The lyrics are some of Sondheim's smartest and more complex as well, funny as well as meaningful. All the musical numbers are charmingly and cleverly staged, especially Agony and The Last Midnight. Hello Little Girl will be too much for some and the creepiness is a little overdone and disconcerting here, Johnny Depp acts it brilliantly though. Rob Marshall shows great technical skill as a director and captures the mood of the musical more than competently. And apart from Crawford the cast are excellent with Meryl Streep's imposing Witch(she kills The Last Midnight and thrillingly), Chris Pine's hilarious Prince and Emily Blunt's nuanced and heartfelt Baker's Wife. Anna Kendrick is a charming Cinderella, James Corden endears as the Baker, Daniel Huttlestone does admirably despite Jack being written incompletely and Johnny Depp is very memorable, his Wolf is certainly not one to trust, in his short screen time.

To conclude, Into the Woods is problematic but doesn't deserve anywhere near the amount of vehement hatred it's gotten on here, and it's far superior to the mediocre at best Annie also from 2014. It's not for everybody but judging from the reviews it's like it's almost illegal to like the film let alone love it. 6.5/10 Bethany Cox

Slick, lavish, and imaginatively vibrant, Rob Marshall's newest musical adaptation "Into the Woods" hits most of the notes as a thoroughly entertaining experience of the holiday season. Assembling one the year's finest casts, Marshall brings his ability to bring each actor to their utmost potential, while keeping composer Stephen Sondheim's brilliance intact. In the end however, the real problem with "Woods" is that its narrative structure is slashed like a hairstylist that took too much off the top, or in this case the second act. The first hour of James Lapine's adaptation is so wholesomely fulfilling. When the story takes a sudden, yet awkward shift into "serious" and more adult territory, this Disney produced spectacle struggles to find its footing. Perhaps, a director's cut, 30 minutes longer, and more clearly obvious themes would have felt more satisfying. This doesn't take away from the marvelous performances that are abound. Those will surely keep you engaged enough to make it through.

It's imperative to begin with Chris Pine. A movie star that hasn't been afforded the opportunity to stretch his acting legs beyond "Star Trek" and "Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit." When you look at the definition of having fun in a role, Pine's face will be planted firmly next to the words. A career best performance with the show's best musical number, "Agony." Try to look at him the same way after this. A true standout, and scene stealer. Go figure by the way, the man has a very impressive set of pipes.

The Queen of the Academy, three-time Oscar-winner Meryl Streep is the best she's been since "The Devil Wears Prada." Seeing Streep operate in these later years, especially stage adaptations like "Doubt," "Mamma Mia!," and last year's "August: Osage County," have not brought out the greatness that Streep is capable of achieving. Granted, anything that is "lower-tier Meryl" is probably better than most, but I've ached to see her hit another home run. This is it. Streep's work as the Witch is profoundly moving and beautifully orchestrated. "Stay with Me" and especially "Last Midnight" will reaffirm her place in our cinematic lives. One of the best performances of the year.

The gorgeous and vivacious Emily Blunt is everything you've come to expect from her at this point in her career. She's an amazing performer, beautiful singer, and knows how to elevate material, even when it clearly begins to bog her down. There's nothing wrong with the way that Blunt interprets the Baker's Wife. She's desperate, eager, and extremely hyperactive to get what she wants. In the latter part of the script, a controversial choice could have ignited talk and tears however, because there's clearly chops throughout the narrative, the Baker's Wife's role ultimately feels non-fulfilling for the audience. That doesn't take away from Blunt's talents. She's simply terrific.

In what clearly is designed to be the heart and soul of "Into the Woods," James Corden's work as the Baker will propel him into a household name (especially with his upcoming takeover for Craig Ferguson). He's funny, tender, and just a joy to watch. He's a throwback to John C. Reilly's Oscar-nominated work in "Chicago." Affecting, expressive, and memorable. In a story full of characters you grew up loving, making terrible life choices, you find yourself rooting for someone to come on the other side alive, intact, and sustained. For many, Corden will be that character. He's the real deal. I can't wait to see him in more challenging and daring roles in the future.

"Up in the Air" gave us Anna Kendrick, well at least to the high- brow film community. One Academy Award nomination later, she has mostly succeeded in her own vehicles like "Pitch Perfect" and the upcoming "The Last 5 Years," at least based on early word. Playing Cinderella is a daunting task. Anyone who has it will have to compete with mental images from the animated classic, and any other live action interpretation you've seen throughout your life. Kendrick has the physical prowess and charisma to do all Cinderella's assets justice however, there's something that ultimately feels off. While her co- star Pine disappears into the role of the Prince with no semblance of his former character interpretations, Kendrick just doesn't disguise herself enough to warrant a 100% golden star, or in this case a shoe. For her number "On the Steps of the Palace," she nearly hits her stride. Just not exactly what we hoped for.

The rest of the cast has their individual moments. Johnny Depp's interpretation of the Wolf was fun, but anyone who had a problem with his vocal range in "Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street," will have their lickings once again. I'm glad that I've learned who Billy Magnussen is now as a result of his work as Rapunzel's Prince. He's delightful. Mackenzie Mauzy's Rapunzel is an unrealized staple of the musical that could have been far more richer and satisfying than what was ultimately displayed. Mauzy's turn is essential.

Christine Baranski's work as the wicked Stepmother kicks off the film on the most enormous high. A delectable presence sprinkled throughout. Same for the brilliant Tracey Ullman who just needs to be in more movies these days. The young performers, Daniel Huttlestone as Jack and Lilla Crawford as Red Riding Hood are equal parts impressive and annoying. The step-sisters, Lucy Punch and Tammy Blanchard are finely tuned with their wicked counterpart throughout.

"Into the Woods" is an energetic, rapturous romp at the movies. Lovely displayed with stunning production work and costume design, which are both singular standouts of the film year. Managed, genuine, and appreciated, "Into the Woods" is a must-watch for the season. An alluring, though flawed work, that stands as an excuse and reason to keep the movie musical alive. If anything, above all else, you take that with you to the bank.

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I enjoyed the movie a lot, it has been many years since i saw "Into the Woods" as a live musical and the film was a nice reminder of why i loved the story so much back then and still do.

In short: It's DEFINITELY not for everyone and i think that is reflected in the very harsh, partially unjust ratings and comments. The adaptation is very close to the original and executed beautifully though and fans will have a good time watching it.

If you enjoyed the original musical or "dramatic comedy musicals" in general then i recommend watching it.

If you expect some Tim Burton-esque "Alice through the Looking Glass" film you will be disappointed because that is NOT what this is despite what the trailer might suggest.

8/10 but i understand that it is only enjoyable for a very specific audience (and definitely not for kids or most teens!).