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Dec. 26th, 2014 11:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsWe interrupt this Yuletide to bring you: SOME OPINIONS ABOUT THE INTO THE WOODS MOVIE.
My opinions are ... mixed! Very mixed. Also, very biased; I know my love for Joanna Gleason, Bernadette Peters and Chip Zien does not allow me really to provide a fair opinion on anybody else attempting to fill their shoes. And yet, and yet.
I mean, I was half-expecting a travesty, and it certainly was not a travesty. Everyone could sing! Chunks of it were amazing. Almost everyone killed it when it came to their major numbers -- every time we went into a song, I'd be sitting there thinking angry and resentful thoughts about how they didn't do any of the buildup right, and it wasn't going to work, and then we'd get three amazing minutes of song and I'd be like "...ok, fine, but YOU DIDN'T EARN THAT." They almost never earned it. But those three-minute segments were nonetheless fantastic. (OK, except for "I Know Things Now," I'm sorry Lilla Crawford, you did your best, but that curtain dream sequence did ... not do it for me. And I also was not carried away by ... like, any of the Witch's songs, until "Last Midnight," but to give Meryl her due she ROCKED "Last Midnight," even though they earned that maybe least of all.)
And Chris Pine chewed every piece of scenery he could find and loved every minute of it, and did I laugh straight through AGONY IN A WATERFALL? Yes, yes I did. Totally worth the price of admission. Anna Kendrick was great -- the staging of "On the Steps of the Palace" was also genuinely fantastic -- and I did really like a lot of the little stuff they did at the beginning that built the village into a world; Jack's mother staring at Cinderella's birds, the stepsisters' carriage splashing other characters as they went by.
Emily Blunt ... Emily Blunt gave an amazing performance, to give her her due, and "Moments in the Woods" was amazing, and mostly I'm cranky because the character she chose to play isn't my Baker's Wife. I knew that she wasn't going to be from the very beginning, when we see her fussing with the Baker to give Little Red more cookies instead of rolling her eyes and taking them out of her hands. Nope, nope, nope. I spent a while trying not to be that person who's like "but it's not the saaaaaame!" because people can and should put their own spin on a character, but all those sharp Slytherin edges that the Baker's Wife has got in the original are what I'm here for, and personally I don't want them softened.
I don't know, I mean, it's a Disney movie, everyone was softened. Except for Rapunzel's prince, who, like, again, from the minute they had Chris Pine show up on a black horse with stubble to contrast against the nice clean-shaven Prince #2 on his white charger, I was like, "we're not getting Agony 2, aren't we." And we didn't. And Rapunzel rides away with Prince #2, and that's FINE, and it's not like I miss the two mystery potato babies that disappear in Act 2 anyway (...OK, I totally do miss the two mystery potato babies that disappear in Act 2, but THAT'S ON ME and I fully acknowledge it) and it's not like I'm wedded to Rapunzel's death, but, but. Also if Rapunzel doesn't die then the Witch's arc makes no sense, but the Witch's arc makes no sense anyway because --
-- well, that's the other character who wasn't softened, was the Witch, who instead went the other direction and became much more a cartoon villain. They cut out a HUGE chunk of the middle, including the entire scene of the Witch as the Baker's Wacky Sitcom Neighbor, and, I mean, I get it. You can't make a Disney movie three hours long. But if you don't have the Witch as a sort-of ally in the middle, and if you don't have the explosion of guilt and loss that is Rapunzel's death -- and if you've been softening all the sharp flawed selfish edges that the heroes have got, all along -- then you haven't earned "Last Midnight." You haven't gotten to a place where you can turn all the fairy-tale narratives on their heads, where you can have the Witch say, "I'm not good, I'm not bad, I'm just right," and believe that maybe it's true. The fact that for the three minutes that Meryl Streep's singing you could believe it anyway is a testament to her abilities as a performer and an actress, so kudos to her for that. But for me "Last Midnight" is kind of the point of the whole thing, so if you haven't earned that, then you've missed it.
But then maybe that all goes back to not having a Narrator. Which, again, I get -- and the decision to have James Corden narrate as the Baker instead, telling the story to Baker Jr., isn't unprecedented or anything. But the point of having a Narrator is that you've got this story, and you've got this man telling the story, and then you have all these vibrant, flawed, three-dimensional characters struggling to burst out further than the words he's locking them down with and the roles they're written to play. And that's not there in this movie.
I don't know. It's got the outside shape of Into the Woods, and it's beautiful to look at and to listen to, but I miss all the twisting, uncomfortable complexity at the heart.
My opinions are ... mixed! Very mixed. Also, very biased; I know my love for Joanna Gleason, Bernadette Peters and Chip Zien does not allow me really to provide a fair opinion on anybody else attempting to fill their shoes. And yet, and yet.
I mean, I was half-expecting a travesty, and it certainly was not a travesty. Everyone could sing! Chunks of it were amazing. Almost everyone killed it when it came to their major numbers -- every time we went into a song, I'd be sitting there thinking angry and resentful thoughts about how they didn't do any of the buildup right, and it wasn't going to work, and then we'd get three amazing minutes of song and I'd be like "...ok, fine, but YOU DIDN'T EARN THAT." They almost never earned it. But those three-minute segments were nonetheless fantastic. (OK, except for "I Know Things Now," I'm sorry Lilla Crawford, you did your best, but that curtain dream sequence did ... not do it for me. And I also was not carried away by ... like, any of the Witch's songs, until "Last Midnight," but to give Meryl her due she ROCKED "Last Midnight," even though they earned that maybe least of all.)
And Chris Pine chewed every piece of scenery he could find and loved every minute of it, and did I laugh straight through AGONY IN A WATERFALL? Yes, yes I did. Totally worth the price of admission. Anna Kendrick was great -- the staging of "On the Steps of the Palace" was also genuinely fantastic -- and I did really like a lot of the little stuff they did at the beginning that built the village into a world; Jack's mother staring at Cinderella's birds, the stepsisters' carriage splashing other characters as they went by.
Emily Blunt ... Emily Blunt gave an amazing performance, to give her her due, and "Moments in the Woods" was amazing, and mostly I'm cranky because the character she chose to play isn't my Baker's Wife. I knew that she wasn't going to be from the very beginning, when we see her fussing with the Baker to give Little Red more cookies instead of rolling her eyes and taking them out of her hands. Nope, nope, nope. I spent a while trying not to be that person who's like "but it's not the saaaaaame!" because people can and should put their own spin on a character, but all those sharp Slytherin edges that the Baker's Wife has got in the original are what I'm here for, and personally I don't want them softened.
I don't know, I mean, it's a Disney movie, everyone was softened. Except for Rapunzel's prince, who, like, again, from the minute they had Chris Pine show up on a black horse with stubble to contrast against the nice clean-shaven Prince #2 on his white charger, I was like, "we're not getting Agony 2, aren't we." And we didn't. And Rapunzel rides away with Prince #2, and that's FINE, and it's not like I miss the two mystery potato babies that disappear in Act 2 anyway (...OK, I totally do miss the two mystery potato babies that disappear in Act 2, but THAT'S ON ME and I fully acknowledge it) and it's not like I'm wedded to Rapunzel's death, but, but. Also if Rapunzel doesn't die then the Witch's arc makes no sense, but the Witch's arc makes no sense anyway because --
-- well, that's the other character who wasn't softened, was the Witch, who instead went the other direction and became much more a cartoon villain. They cut out a HUGE chunk of the middle, including the entire scene of the Witch as the Baker's Wacky Sitcom Neighbor, and, I mean, I get it. You can't make a Disney movie three hours long. But if you don't have the Witch as a sort-of ally in the middle, and if you don't have the explosion of guilt and loss that is Rapunzel's death -- and if you've been softening all the sharp flawed selfish edges that the heroes have got, all along -- then you haven't earned "Last Midnight." You haven't gotten to a place where you can turn all the fairy-tale narratives on their heads, where you can have the Witch say, "I'm not good, I'm not bad, I'm just right," and believe that maybe it's true. The fact that for the three minutes that Meryl Streep's singing you could believe it anyway is a testament to her abilities as a performer and an actress, so kudos to her for that. But for me "Last Midnight" is kind of the point of the whole thing, so if you haven't earned that, then you've missed it.
But then maybe that all goes back to not having a Narrator. Which, again, I get -- and the decision to have James Corden narrate as the Baker instead, telling the story to Baker Jr., isn't unprecedented or anything. But the point of having a Narrator is that you've got this story, and you've got this man telling the story, and then you have all these vibrant, flawed, three-dimensional characters struggling to burst out further than the words he's locking them down with and the roles they're written to play. And that's not there in this movie.
I don't know. It's got the outside shape of Into the Woods, and it's beautiful to look at and to listen to, but I miss all the twisting, uncomfortable complexity at the heart.
no subject
Date: 2014-12-29 06:29 pm (UTC)Hrmmm. I think I'll wait on this one.
---L.
no subject
Date: 2014-12-30 07:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-12-30 08:38 pm (UTC)