Movie Review #20: Into the Woods

Into the Woods (2014)
Director: Rob Marshall
Writer(s): James Lapine, Stephen Sondheim
Starring: Meryl Streep, Emily Blunt, Anna Kendrick

Disney's Into the Woods is DISNEY'S Into the Woods. That could be a review in and of itself.

OK, a little more context is necessary. If one could not tell from Rodgers and Hammersmonth, I'm a bit of a musical theatre nut. To an even greater degree, I'm a movie musical nut. I consider the musical to be a form of film as important to its development as is the tragicomedy to stage plays or as the bildungsroman is to novels. I'm also very much a traditionalist in this route: I want dance numbers with artistry in mind, I want voices with natural vibrato and ring, I want consistent set pieces. But, ever since 2002's Chicago, the movie musical has taken a rather dark turn, in my book. Unless original Disney animation is involved, movie musicals have become stage musicals trimmed back with no thought to theme, pacing, or character development. They are, as Roger Ebert once put it, "songs connected by a story" instead of "story connected by songs." Into the Woods is another film right down that line, and it's one of the most disappointing movie going experiences I've had this year. A great deal of my rage comes from my feelings towards the original and the flaws of adaptation, but there are too many flaws in this movie to give it a pass.

Into the Woods is mostly a combination of the stories of "Jack and the Beanstalk" and "Cinderella." A witch casts a curse of infertility upon a baker and his wife after the baker's father steals some of her magic beans. In order to get the curse lifted, the baker and his wife need to retrieve "a cow as white as milk, a cape as red as blood, hair as yellow as corn, and a shoe as pure as gold." Along the way, the baker and his wife encounter Little Red Riding Hood, Jack, Cinderella, and the respective side characters from each story. By the end of the musical's first act (the film's first hour and a quarter), they manage to get the curse lifted. Yet, in the second act, the wife of Jack's giant, killed in the first act, comes down to wreak vengeance upon the characters of the story. Many fairytale characters who normally end up living "happily ever afters" end up dead. It soon falls to the baker, his wife, Jack, Little Red Riding Hood, and Cinderella to kill the giant or turn on each other in a morally ambiguous plot.

The narrative of Into the Woods is incredibly intricate but very easy to follow, in both the film and the original Sondheim musical. Fans of the original will note that many, many elements from the original musical have been cut or altered, nearly all of which are to the film's detriment. Some characters who die in the musical do not die in the film, crushing the opportunities for character development and theming that result from these deaths. Perhaps the biggest and most devastating change is the substitution of the baker for the narrator, who is a character in the original musical; while this seems like a minor change, it drastically reduces Into the Woods's impact as an incisive criticism of determinism and fairy tales as fate. I'll discuss this in greater detail, but the narrator's importance to Into the Woods cannot be understated. In many ways, it is essential to understanding just what makes the original show so great. At the basest level, Into the Woods remains coherent and focused with the cuts, even if it loses much of its depth.

I'll try to be more objective and discuss exactly what Into the Woods gets right. For one, the sound mixing is excellent; the instruments are perfectly set to complement the vocals. While this should be an obvious thing to do, I've seen more than a few movie musicals fail to keep their dynamics in check. The costume design is also spectacular. The cinematography is quite nice in many scenes. The film looks fantastic; the little bits of color shading really make everything pop. This is what Into the Woods needed to be, visually. By far the best element of the film is Emily Blunt as the Baker's Wife. She is the one performer in the show who goes above and beyond the call of the libretto and gives us more than what we are looking for. Her confidence in both her maternity and her sexuality lends her part a real credibility that's lacking in most of the other performances. Her comedy is great. She is a joy every second she is on the screen. Also good are Johnny Depp and Chris Pine as the lecherous Big Bad Wolf and Prince Charming, respectively; they might chew the scenery a bit much, but the roles call for it. Daniel Huttlestone is a half-decent Jack as well.

Then there's the bad.

James Cordren is a likeable actor in most everything he is in, but likeability alone is not enough to give his performance as the Baker a pass. The Baker's character needs to struggle morally throughout the show in order to be compelling, and Cordren is not an accomplished enough actor to make the part work. I never believed that he was going through any turmoil, even when he suffers the worst trauma in the show. Lilla Crawford initially displays the innocence needed for Little Red Riding Hood, but she is unable to develop the character any further in the second act. Her "pouty" face is not enough to express the character's sense of growth. Anna Kendrick, one of my personal least favorite actresses, never fails to disappoint me with disappointment; her face is as expressionless as ever, and her singing is awful (she closes the diphthong every time). Her face is blank whenever the camera isn't holding her on close-up, and it seems as if she is totally oblivious to what is going on around her.

Most disappointing of all is Meryl Streep as the Witch. Regardless of how one interprets the character of the Witch in the original show (for the record, I consider the Witch to be Sondheim's critique of exactitude and utilitarianism), one thing is clear: the Witch is certain of her identity. Throughout the movie, I had a very difficult time pinning the Witch down to a clear character due to the spastic, over-the-top nature of Streep's performance. Ham can work in a performance (look at Christopher Walken), but an identity must clearly exist for it to work. Streep's Witch is so inconsistent in what she's trying to be - the apathetic monster of fairytale lore, the over-doting mother, the diva, the utilitarian, the comedienne - that she ends up being nothing. Streep may be giving her all, but there's no role into which she can give it. Thus, she ends up being the cast's weakest link in spite of her being the best actress in the movie.

I find it difficult to pin down the worst part of the movie, as my voice as a musical theatre fan conflicts with my voice as a pure movie critic. Thus, there are two things that emerge as Into the Woods's biggest flaw. The more obvious, movie critic, complaint is that of the terrible pacing. In the original musical, the two acts of the story act as tonally contrasting pieces, one of which is generally lighthearted, one of which is generally dark. The film fails to transition between these two parts; the shift is very abrupt. It's especially agonizing considering how easy a fix could have been made. Into the Woods should have done what most of the great movie musicals - The Sound of Music, Fiddler on the Roof, Carousel - have done and put an intermission card in the middle of the show. This would have prepared the viewers for the change in tone. Sure, it might come as a shock to the modern, Facebook-loving, immediate access audience, but it's the easiest and best solution to the problem at hand.

As a theatre-lover, there's an even bigger sin at work. Into the Woods is heavily reliant on pitch correction and musical simplification in order to make its performers' singing palatable. If one pays attention, one will realize that every singer comes in exactly on the pitch. Never is there an alteration to the vowel or intonation in order to tune the note, for even a fraction of a second, as is the case with 99% of all singers. Furthermore, the vibrato for everyone's voice is remarkably reedy and artificially produced. Never do the notes ring in the ear, unless obvious echo effects are used. Perhaps even more insulting is the alteration of rhythms and registers in order to make the score easier to sing. The score is butchered, with syncopations and triplets removed almost entirely. Whenever a part becomes too difficult for a performer to sing, usually James Cordren, the singers flip down a register in order to sing the part. This would never fly in a play; in fact, any alteration to Sondheim and Lapine's score is viable to get a production company sued for violating copyright law. Worst of all, with all the pitch cheating, I mean, correction and musical alterations, Anna Kendrick still sounds awful.

In the broad scheme of things, poor casting, pacing, and musical execution cannot completely ruin a movie (though they can prove taxing). Is the film at least focused? Overall, yes. Into the Woods tells a complete story and manage to fulfill the basics of the original musical. Yet it very much feels like a SparkNotes version of the show. Of all the main themes of the show - the futility of determinism, the complexities of raising a child, the nature of causality in a post-Tolstoy world, the voyeuristic nature of male sexuality - the Disney adaptation fully develops only the last (surprising, considering that this is Disney). As far as being a fairy tale satire, the only point the Disney adaptation manages to make is, "sometimes happily ever after doesn't happen." Roll the end credits.

In my book, this is the worst insult one could give to the original musical. All fairy tales have a finality and certainty to them that Sondheim and Lapine clearly find disingenuous. It doesn't matter what happens along the way, be it the blinding of stepsisters or the death of a giantess's husband; the heroes get a happily ever after and all is done. Life doesn't work out this way, and no matter how poignant the morals of fairy tales might be, their clear-cut endings thwart any questions we might have about them. By killing the narrator and destroying the internal path of the the woods in the original musical, Sondheim and Lapine force both the characters and the audience to face a world in which there aren't just ambiguous endings: there are ambiguous choices, ambiguous characters, ambiguous environments. The world of Into the Woods is meant to be complex. While Emily Blunt does her best to communicate this point in her admittedly great rendition of "Moments in the Woods," it's just not enough to compensate for how much Disney cuts from the film in order to truncate the themes. It's too certain.

Thus, as far as adaptation is concerned, Disney's Into the Woods is a flat-out flop. It doesn't manage to communicate the complexities of the original; it's instead a mostly rushed, mostly subpar, mostly squeaky clean version of the stage show that looks really nice. The movie critic in me hopes, that if both the narrator and an intermission were included, this could have been one of the great movie musicals, especially considering that this show comes from Disney. The theatre nerd in me tells me to scrap everything and restart with an entirely new cast of singers who can act rather than actors who can sing... with help from the studio heads. As it is, Into the Woods is just OK, instead of being good, bad, or great. This show deserves better.

Recommendation: If you love the original show and are not certain as to whether or not you want to see the Disney adaptation, stay away. If one has never seen the show before, do not see this musical; rent instead the original 1991 stage recording and appreciate the full-length, uncut brilliance of the original cast. If you've seen the show and want to see Emily Blunt redeem herself from her lackluster performance in Edge of Tomorrow, then go ahead and see Into the Woods. As for anyone else, there are too many good movies out right now to spend money on this one. Go see Birdman instead.

I give Into the Woods 4.6/10 stars.