Film review: INTO THE WOODS

(Disney)

While Les Misérables (2012) is two and a half hours of torture, Into the Woods is good in its first half, overlong and dour in its second. Rob Marshall directed my favorite movie musical, Chicago, but has not managed to create a decent film since. Into the Woods showed a lot of potential in its first act – it was stylish, fun and catchy. The witch (Meryl Streep, always great) tells a childless baker and his wife that she will lift the curse of bareness if they find for her four items: a cape as red as blood, a golden shoe, a strand of hair as yellow as corn, and a cow as white as milk.

The problem is that the movie loses steam. Rob Marshall’s directing feels overly staged and constrained even if he manages to set the right tone at the beginning. But this mess of a film isn’t entirely his fault – it’s Sondheim’s story, which really does not lend itself to the screen at all, and songs which barely feel motivated. It’s a production which is all style and no substance, and the weakness of the source material comes out here. Its writing that attempts to be a clever fairy-tale retelling, but becomes nothing more than a slog by its final act.

Sondheim choices that come off as strange: the Rapunzel character, the death of Jack’s mother, the death of Little Red Riding Hood’s mother and grandmother. Into The Woods is supposed to be macabre, but it just feels lazy. Too many balls are being juggled where, by the time we’re farther along in the movie, everything happening feels too disjointed. The lack of coherency and the pushy melodrama prevent this film from rolling along in an entertaining manner.

The writing, therefore, does not merit any great performances. The immaculate Christine Baranski is hilarious as the evil stepmother. Emily Blunt and Meryl Streep eke out some solid performances from the thin roles they're given. Chris Pine is fine as the prince. Other than that, the casting feels uninspired. Johnny Depp’s cameo is bizarre and odd, resulting in an off number, which should be more more fun than it is. Daniel Huttlestone as a cockneye Jack is less grating than in Les Miserables but, nonetheless, his performance is one-note and outright annoying by the third act. Anna Kendrick proves that even good actresses, when given bad material, can be plain. If there’s one substantial criticism of the ensemble, it’s that they have no genuine chemistry.

I’m such a pissy pants. The musical has a little bit of charm. Stay for thirty minutes and then leave. But if you stay longer, be warned: it just gets longer and more pointless. I don’t know what I would have changed. I know the original is supposed to be more violent, but so what? It wouldn’t change the main problems. It never entirely falls apart, as David concludes in his brief. But the film adaptation is a flat and uninspired mess by the time the orphaned children gather around their new parents, losing its grasp on whatever it wanted to be.  

Grade: C-