Into the woods is a 2014 take on the classic fairy tale. It has all the stories you know. Jack and the Beanstalk, Rapunzel, Little Red Riding Hood and Cinderella.
It has a varied and well known cast with Johnny Depp making, what I would call an inflated cameo. He plays the big bad wolf, but is not in it for all that long.
This is a film that I was asked to watch by my wife, and if I didn't like it she would watch it later. I stuck it out till the end and didn't hate it but it also didn't win me over completely.
I thought I would write about it here as so far I have covered only things I might recommend, but not done any negative reviews. It's all been positive. I thought that should not be the only reason to write my blog here. This should cover things you may have missed and might like even if I didn't.
This film has charm, appeal and a large cast of names that you are happy to pay to see. Meryl Streep, Anna Kendrick, Emily Blunt and James Cordon all have plenty of screen time to almost call them the main stars of the film with names like Depp and Chris Pine being in it for a shorter part of the films run time.
The premise of the film is a baker and his wife (Cordon and Blunt) are tasked by the witch, (Streep) who has cursed the family to be childless, to complete a set of tasks and retrieve items that she can not. The items are all from the range of fairy tales and allow the stories to mix and intertwine.
The thing I have failed to mention so far is it is a musical.
Should this make a difference? No. Is that why it didn't sit with me? Maybe.
Now defending myself a little here, I have nothing against musicals, two of my favourite films are musicals (Blues Brothers and South Park:The Movie) however it felt forced into being this. This is why I tend not to like this style of musical. I must confess to never having watched Les Mis but from the trailers and clips I have seen, this film is trying to recreate that vibe. The singing the story instead of having songs as part of the overall performance. I have seen a few stage shows that are critically acclaimed (We Will Rock You and Rock of Ages) that use famous songs as part of the story, and it feels like the same thing. I didn't enjoy those stage shows because I love the music and it was performed amazingly well, but it is shoe horned into a very loose and tenuous story. I would rather just watch the performers taking turns to perform great songs that I love and appreciate their talent rather than trying to string it together loosely based on song titles.
While "Into the Woods" does not use famous songs in this way, it feels like I enjoyed the story and the premise of the movie, but had trouble with how they tried to string scenes together and keep the music going where it didn't benefit from it or enhance the experience. Both Blues Brothers and South Park place songs into a scene that lifts the whole experience and makes you appreciate the actors/musicians talents just that little bit more.
There are a few dark moments in this film that are in keeping with the original Grimm fairy tales (the ugly sisters fate being a notable example) but nothing that makes it inappropriate for a young(ish) audience.
While watching I came to the conclusion that I don't like Chris Pine. I think he is quite a one note actor (granted it's more notes than me as an actor) and I enjoyed the Star Trek films with him as Kirk, partly due to the fact I think Kirk is quite a wooden character thanks to the history of William Shatner also playing the character. He was not the Prince I would like to see in this sort of film.
This is a good film with some good performances, however I am not going to say I enjoyed it. I can say it is not terrible it is well put together, but there are parts of it that just don't sit quite right for me in what it is trying to do and achieve. It's worth trying to be able to form your own opinion of it but I think some people may turn it off quite quickly while others revel in the attempt to retell the classic of our childhood. It's nice to get other visions of these but for me there are films that do it better. Tangled, Hoodwinked and Once Upon a Time to name a few.
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