Into The Woods (Rob Marshall)

[Henry Gale]

http://filmcutting.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/Into_the_Woods.jpg

IMDb (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2180411/) / Wiki (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Into_the_Woods_%28film%29)

[Henry Gale]

Nah.

Like an star-studded musical episode of Once Upon A Time in its production values, with only the strength of the original book of the musical keeping it all together. Awkwardly shot, staged and hollowly designed, frenetically and nonsensically edited, and just generally disserving to the array of genuinely inspired performances of this material. Blunt, Pine, Kendrick and (an oddly underused) Streep are all so very good and full of beautiful energy and lovely humourous flourishes and I could go on and on about small giggly moments Blunt has all on their own. It's just such a shame about things like the stilted lip-syncing-based sound design, the fractured narrative style that did nothing to keep me involved to what happens on screen emotionally, and all of Marshall's other inept choices along the way.

It's been a long time since I saw the Bernadette Peters-starrring one on TV as a kid, but I vividly remember and can still grab onto the general feeling it gave me more than the specifics of the story and the songs (which I can't really say which elements of are exactly missing, invented or changed with the movie), but I know it left such a greater impression on me all those years back than anything this will.

What a shame.

Something around... ** / 4.9

[Dukefrukem]

Again thanks for your thoughts Henry.


I have a crush on Kendrick. I feel like I could charm her if I ever saw her in Portland.

[Fezzik]

Nah.

Like an star-studded musical episode of Once Upon A Time in its production values, with only the strength of the original book of the musical keeping it all together.


Oof. Considering that I'm one of the few theatre people who really doesn't dig the musical all that much (to be fair, I'm not really a fan of Sondheim in general), reading that just sealed the deal for me. I won't be seeing this in theatres.

[Spinal]

This is my favorite musical of all-time. I'm seeing it with my family on Christmas Day. I do not expect to be pleased.

[TGM]

I haven't seen the musical, but I can very easily see this working in that format pretty well. As a movie, though, it really just doesn't work, and grows especially tired by the third act. There were some good performances, and the Prince's duet was definitely the highlight of the movie. Pine just killed it. I also kinda dug how, like Les Miserables, for most of the movie most of the dialogue was sung all throughout, until, again, they kinda cut that out in the third act, reserving all the singing specifically for the songs. I dunno, it was very inconsistent that way, and overall had a cheap feel to it that Henry Gale pretty well summarized.

[Mara]

This is my favorite musical of all-time. I'm seeing it with my family on Christmas Day. I do not expect to be pleased.

It's my favorite, too. I will probably see it eventually but I am not super happy.

[TGM]

The more this settles in, the more it kinda bothers me that this movie was shot as if they were just filming the play being performed, as opposed to turning that play into a movie, because that's really how this feels with the way it's staged throughout, and even down to Johnny Depp's "wolf" not actually being a wolf, but clearly a man wearing wolf paws and a tail. That's something you can get away with on the stage, but in a film, I waited his whole time for him to transform completely into an anthropomorphic wolf, but it never happened. This movie does nothing to take advantage of this material and do something truly cinematic with it. It just gives off such a cheap feel throughout, and leaves me wondering, if they were only interested in performing the play like a play, and not like a movie, why not just make this a stage production? If they weren't interested in taking this source material and actually making a movie out of it, then why did they even bother?

[Fezzik]

I really liked this. It brought newfound appreciation for the material that I never really 'got' watching any of the stage productions I'd seen.

Streep is a goddess. Her performance of 'Stay With Me' was flawless.

And yes, nobody is as surprised by these comments as I am.

[Lucky]

This movie does nothing to take advantage of this material and do something truly cinematic with it. It just gives off such a cheap feel throughout, and leaves me wondering, if they were only interested in performing the play like a play, and not like a movie, why not just make this a stage production? If they weren't interested in taking this source material and actually making a movie out of it, then why did they even bother?

That similarly sums up my distaste for Marshall's Chicago.

[Wryan]

I enjoyed this. This is one musical I've never actually seen or heard, so I may be more forgiving for that reason...and perhaps would be blown away more if I heard the original version(s). But as it stands, I had fun. Blunt just kills it--had no idea she has such a beautiful voice as well. Every time Streep is onscreen, I had a nice big smile on my face. There are, however, a few too many strands to intertwine so neatly here, but it worked well enough for me.

Prince duet is hilarious.

EDIT: Dion Beebe and Colleen Atwood....of course.

[number8]

Finally gave this a shot despite my belief that Rob Marshall is a tycoon in drilling for boredom out of the soils of great source materials, and turns out he struck a wellspring in this one. This is an absolute slog to watch for the reasons TGM stated. I have no idea why something that looks like it has an enormous budget is staged and shot so tightly as if there's a real live audience watching them perform in front of a green screen.

Also, narrative-wise, Into the Woods is one of those books that has such a clear and deliberate intermission to divide the two acts that does not translate well at all when adapted so exactly. The movie ends up building to a middle and then the second act here feels like an extended coda that wouldn't fucking end. It really, really does not work.

[Spinal]

Finally gave this a shot despite my belief that Rob Marshall is a tycoon in drilling for boredom out of the soils of great source materials, and turns out he struck a wellspring in this one.

How true this is. He built his reputation on Chicago, but I've always maintained that movie was decent despite Marshall, rather than because of him. And then Nine was something of a disaster. Musical theatre deserves a better cinematic translator.

[baby doll]

Yeah, this was pretty dire. For one thing, it felt like they were singing the same damn song for three hours. Even worse, for a film awash in special effects, there's no sense of wonder here. At one point, Emily Blunt goes from barren to fully pregnant in a matter of seconds and her husband's response is, "Well, that was quick." Also note how Meryl Streep's character is introduced blowing the door of the bakery clear off its hinges when she just as easily could've opened it by turning the knob. After a while I felt like Zhao Tao in that scene from A Touch of Sin where that dude keeps beating her over the head with a fat stack of cash.