Later on, when I became aware of the way they cleaned up and dumbed down their source material and the horrendous way they treated their theme park employees, I swore off the House of Mouse for good. Or, well, I tried to - Disney have fingers in a lot of pies, and I kept on finding their logo cropping up on what felt like the least likely titles. The final straw came when I realized they'd taken over Marvel; that was when I knew resistance was futile and that I'd have to start judging their films on their own merits and not on the stupid castle stamped on the credits of what felt like every third thing I viewed.
I'm not sure what the impulse was that led me to look at Into the Woods yesterday. On balance, I suspect it was probably masochism - I'd had some guaranteed good times lined up to compensate for the past couple of depressing entries, so it wasn't as though I had any urgent need to watch Disney tackle Sondheim. I've never been a huge fan of Enchanted, their other live-action fairytale musical, and besides I'd seen the trailers and the central theme had wormed itself unpleasantly into my hindbrain where it popped up at regular intervals, unbidden and utterly unwanted.
The main plot is a complex and involved one, linking a number of classic fairytales including Rapunzel, Cinderella, Jack and the Beanstalk and Red Riding Hood. Our main protagonists, however, are the Baker (James Corden) and his wife (Emily Blunt), a peasant couple whose desire for a child threatens to consume their entire lives. The Baker's family, however, was cursed by a Witch (Meryl Streep), who was angered by his father who inadvertently stole her youth and beauty when he stole the vegetables from her garden - in particular, some very special magic beans.
In order to lift the curse, the Witch demands that the Baker fetch some very specific items - a cow as white as milk, a cape as red as blood, hair as yellow as corn, and a slipper as fine as gold. The Baker and his wife venture into the woods to retrieve them, and as they do, they run into various other figures all searching for their own dearest wishes. Misunderstandings ensue, but eventually the curse is lifted and by a little over the hour mark, everybody is living happily ever after.
Unfortunately for our heroes, however, the film runs a little over two hours long...
The good
Taking some time out to check the reviews for this one, I noticed a sharp divergence between the opinions of the critics and the moviegoing public; the former group seemed to love it, while the latter frequently seemed offended by it to the point of personal affront. I'm happy to say I'm with the critics on this one; Into the Woods isn't a flawless film by any means, but it's certainly an interesting one, and it left me with more to think about than the average family blockbuster.I'll start with the standard disclaimer that I haven't seen the source material; I'm aware several characters and scenes have been cut from the original material, which might prove an annoyance for Sondheim purists, but from my point of view there was more than enough going on and it certainly never felt as though chunks of the story had been hacked out wholesale.
Apparently it was a directorial decision to cast actors rather than singers, and I think it was a wise one - the cast acquit themselves remarkably well, and on a personal note, I've never been a huge fan of Broadway-style vocal gymnastics anyway. I did find Lilla Crawford's Red Riding Hood gratingly stagey at first, but her segments with Johnny Depp's predatory Wolf are some of the film's best.
Credit also has to be given to Meryl Streep as the Witch, who creates a figure both deranged and oddly sympathetic. She attacks the material with real gusto, and it's only when she disappears that the film starts to lose a little of its momentum. Anna Kendrick, meanwhile, makes for a delightfully self-aware Cinderella, vacillating and scheming as she gradually takes control of her destiny.
I know a lot of people have complained about the film's second act, where the happy-ever-afters evaporate and magic is abandoned in favour of some hard life lessons. To do this, however, is to miss the point - Into the Woods is very much a story about growing up and taking responsibility for one's own actions, and about how magical thinking will never be an adequate substitute for common sense. It's easy to forget that fairytales originated as a way of introducing children to truths too large and frightening to speak out loud - in their oldest forms, these are cautionary tales about blood and predators, where the default state of existence is to live under mortal threat. I loved the way that the film actually confronted this - Disney have increasingly been making a shift away from moral absolutism towards more complex emotional material, and if anybody's really longing for a shift back towards the so-called good old days, then I'm honestly concerned for the state of the world today.
The bad
Much has been made of Into the Woods taking a somewhat darker tone than previous Disney musicals, but in this case I'd argue that maybe they didn't go far enough? I'm no fan of gratuitous violence, but that's almost the point - why kill or maim characters in various creative ways if not to provide drama and emotional heft? Here, these events happen in an eyeblink, and I'm still not sure whether or not Cinderella's prince is alive at the end of the film. For moments like these to be relevant, they have to be memorable, or they lose whatever impact they might have had.This, I suppose, is my main gripe with the film as a whole - the libretto tackles some big, complex, scary themes that the cinematography ducks almost entirely. I found myself repeatedly disappointed as we failed to see Cinderella's meeting with the Prince, or the world of the giants and the destruction that the Giant's wife subsequently wrought. Bluntly put, there wasn't enough spectacle, culminating in a visually and verbally muted conclusion that ultimately diminishes the movie's primary messages.
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