Into the Woods

Fairy tales and music from Disney. Perfect, Right?

Our story mainly follows a baker (James Corden) and his wife (Emily Blunt), who desperately seek to have a curse reversed, allowing his wife to bear a child. The witch (Meryl Streep), whom originally laid the curse on the baker's house, tells the baker to gather four items. A slipper, a hood, a cow, and some hair. The baker and his wife begrudgingly take to the quest, meeting the famous fable heroes of old.

Okay, let's get this out of the way right now. If you don't like musicals this movie is not for you, right from jump street. There is more singing in this than spoken words, and this movie is reserved for people that either enjoy that, or can withstand it for around two hours. Now that we have that out of the way allow me to begin my review.

I love musicals, and I especially love musicals that are adapted for the screen. Gerard Butler as The Phantom, Rosario Dawson as Mimi from Rent, and even John Travolta as Danny from Grease are all lasting memories. I have seen musicals on Broadway, in my home state of Florida, and where ever else I can find them. So, where does this movie rank among the classics of old? Meh. It's okay. This is one of the few musicals I never had the opportunity to see, while I was growing up. So, like most people that go to see a movie adaptation of a musical, my entire experience was based on the way it was presented in this movie. I like the entire third act, I think whenever you can cleverly flip some old fairy tales around to make them your own, the world is a creatively better place. Everything leading up to the third act felt like a race to get to the finish line. Some characters were forgotten about completely, some resolutions were reached without much resistance, and some of the morals were heavy handed. I don't expect to sit through a movie about fairy tale characters with out some heavy handed lessons at the end; but, this was a bit absurd. Almost every character broke the fourth wall to let the audience know just what they should be learning from this. I feel the creators went that way to combat the blatant pedophilia feeling people would be getting from the Little Red Riding Hood arc. I would normally take someone at their word if they told me I was looking into this too much; but, there is no getting around the fact that you can directly correlate pedophilia and the Wolf's hunger without much issue. That lesson is supposed to be "don't talk to strangers," the main lesson is "be careful what you wish for," and a couple of other messages mixed in. Trust me they will all be hard to miss.

The music in this was another part of this movie that held it back from true greatness. Usually, I love the music in every musical I see, and will immediately run to iTunes so I can enjoy it for the next week. This time, there were a few songs that just couldn't register with me. It wasn't the singer's fault, or the orchestra, some of the lyrics that they came up with were just so bland. Again, don't get me wrong I liked a good amount the songs presented; but, there were just a couple that seemed a bit lazy and I found that weird, since it hasn't happened to me much before. I loved the song where the princes started to compare the agony they were going through, but I was bored by the opening theme.

The acting here should be close to perfect with the amount of A list actors they threw at this production, right? Well, yes and no. Just because they are A list, doesn't mean they were made for this picture. As usual I had a major problem with Chris Pine's acting; but at least he can sing. Thankfully I didn't have to suffer through much of Johnny Depp's bullshit, since he was only allowed about five to ten minutes of screen time. The rest of the cast was fine. Anna Kendrick was a bold and welcome choice as Cinderella. James Corden and Emily Blunt didn't have much chemistry, but did well in their respective roles. The true scene thief here should be no surprise to anyone, Meryl Streep. My God, this woman is amazing. Sings beautifully, and sells the audience on anything she feels like conveying. Sometimes I felt like the characters acting scared of her in the movie, were just the actors conveying their admiration of a true legend.

Final Verdict: Rent it I was a little disappointed by the showing here. It was an above average movie, with a good cast, and a descent enough storyline. You won't hate yourself for watching it, but there is no rush.