Movie Reviews - Into the Woods

It's a little late, but here, finally, is my weekend review!

I mentioned in a recent post that I really enjoy musicals. One of my favorite movies is Mary Poppins. I have a favorite musical, Disney’s Bedknobs and Broomsticks. I cried heroic manly man tears both of the times that I saw Les Mis in theaters. I don’t get the chance to see musicals on stage nearly as often as I’d like, but I have seen stage productions of Fame and Les Mis and loved them both. I also desperately want to see Wicked. As a fan of musicals, I openly acknowledge that there is a stark difference between a musical made for the silver screen, and musicals adapted to the silver screen from the stage. After the success of Les Mis, I expect to see a resurgence of movie adaptations of stage productions, and while I’m looking forward to this, I accept that this is sometimes going to be a bad idea.

I also love fairy tales. I am a dude, and I am proud that I love fairy tales. On these notes, Into the Woods.

I want to get something out of the way right away: I really enjoyed this movie. I want to get something else out of the way, however: I think I would have liked this better as a play. And yeah, I’ll expand on this as we go. Basically, this movie was good, but it was simultaneously long, for a movie, and yet packed full of stuff (that’s the technical term, by the way). It was fun, but also a bit convoluted, and the story was delivered at a rapid fire pace that was just unpleasant a lot of the time.

But guys, there is something more important to a musical than the story, and that’s the music, and because this is the first review of this kind, I think that it is worth mentioning that I will be reviewing it differently, rating the music, the story, and the production, and then rating the entire thing overall by averaging those scores, and that, unlike with other things that I review, this will be on a 1 to 10 scale much more like what you would expect on another review site. Where an 8 would usually be the highest score that you would expect to see me give, in this review a 10 is totally achievable, and the highest score. I might post my musical rating scale at some point, but I dunno.

So yeah, that said, the music in this was spectacular.

The cast of this movie was all-star, rather than a cast of singers exclusively. A couple of the people, mainly Chris Pine (Prince Charming) and Emily Blunt (the Baker’s Wife), I didn’t even realize could sing, at least not this well. And they were good. Even alongside an immense talent like Maryl Streep (the Witch) and vocal powerhouse Anna Kendrick (Cinderella) they more than held their own. The initial musical number, I Wish, and Maryl’s solo piece in her final scene particularly stand out amongst a line-up of songs which never disappointed. As far as the music goes, this movie scores a 10 out of 10, and I could honestly sit through it again right now just for the songs.

After the music is the production. A huge aspect of what makes a musical good is the way it is presented visually. On a stage, such as where this musical was intended to be viewed, you don’t have special effects like those in a movie. You can’t just CG something into existence when you can’t build it. You can’t just CG a character when there is no one alive who has the look to play it. You have to rely on costumes and lighting and complicated and engrossing set pieces to create the atmosphere that is necessary for your production, and a lot of the writing is going to take this into account. This is why the production of any movie based upon a stage production, not just any movie based on a stage musical, is so important: a big part of the storytelling comes from the visual atmosphere of the piece, the quality of which is dependent on the production. And like the music, the production values in this movie were spectacular.

From realistic, rustic medieval shops and households, to beautiful, rustic castles, to deep, dark, complex, confusing and ever-changing woods, there wasn’t a single scene in this entire movie where the location wasn’t one hundred percent realistic and immersive. I don’t know how much of this was filmed on location or otherwise, but the look of this movie was absolutely breathtakingly beautiful. Combine these sets with vibrant lighting, and some great visual effects to represent the magic of the story, and this might just be the most visually convincing movie that I’ve ever seen, and I cannot wait to get this movie on DVD when it is released just to re-watch some of these beautiful scenes.

In addition to the scenery, also under the category of production is the choreography, and while it was good in this movie, and while there were a couple of scenes which really blew me away, mainly the aforementioned Maryl Streep solo scene, and Chris Pine’s scene at the top of a waterfall, mostly the choreography was, I felt, only average. I freely acknowledge that I’ve been spoiled by the Portobello Road sequence from Bedknobs and Broomsticks, but very little of the choreography in this outright wowed me. Due to this, I give the production in this movie a solid 8 out of 10.

Finally, we need to talk about this story. Love it or hate it, this movie had a heck of a story. I left this movie legitimately not knowing what to feel or think. On the surface this is just a story of bringing a bunch of fairy tales together and weaving them together to tell a new story involving all of these characters, and this illusion persists throughout the entire first act, where we have all of the typical fairy tale characters playing out the typical fairy tale tropes and everything is happy, and you get all geared up for this happy fun time fairy tale romp where everyone ends up where they’re supposed to be by the end. You expect a story full of Disney-ness and watered-down content and happy endings and non-reality. And then Johnny Depp appears from the woods as the Big Bad Wolf and starts giving Little Red Riding Hood the pedo stare and being uncomfortable and creepy, and you receive a shock, that these stories are going to totally take the fairy tales back to their roots and be vaguely horrifying.

Despite this, though, you’re still pretty horrified that Cinderella’s step mom chops her daughters’ toes off to try to fit their feet into Cinderella’s slipper. You’re surprised when the Witch and Rapunzel are portrayed as a loving mother her is overprotective of her equally loving, adventurous, young adult daughter, and when Jack is used to warn of the dangers of keeping your head in the clouds and shirking your responsibilities. When the Baker and the Baker’s Wife resort to cheating and stealing from others to get the child that they so desire, and when Cinderella’s story is treated as a cautionary tale warning of the potential perils of achieving your dream. But still, it’s all okay, because by the end everyone has what they want, and it all looks like things will end happily.

Then, suddenly, the movie sneaks up on you with a third act, where the wife of the giant that Jack slew comes down to Earth to get revenge. Out of practically nowhere the audience is thrown into a situation where the characters must all deal with the consequences of their decisions. Because Cinderella didn’t know the prince very well, she is surprised when he cheats on her. The Baker’s Wife realizes that, even with a child in her life, she still isn’t happy. Jack loses his mother because of his thievery. The Witch loses her daughter to her overprotective-ness. The story even, rather suddenly and harshly, forces the characters to deal with the finality of death, and portrays probably the most likeable character in the story aside from Cinderella as someone who almost repeats the mistakes of his father by having him abandon his son.

In this final act, the story takes fairy tales back to their roots. Not back to their original version, because it already did that, but to their roots as cautionary commentary on the human condition, as cautionary tales warning us all of what only a few mistakes can turn us into. I loved this, but this is the part where I feel that this would have been better as a stage production. In a stage production you can have an incredibly long show time and intermissions. In a movie, you expect the story to be told in about two hours. This movie ran almost two and a half hours, and it still felt rushed. So while I loved the story, as jarring and uncomfortable as it might be, it could have been done better, and only gets a 7 out of 10. This means that, between the music, the story, and the production, this movie earns a score of 8 out of 10. It was a lot of fun, but flawed, and I recommend it.