Movie Review--Into the Woods

I’ll begin with an admission; I consider Into the Woods the best musical of the last quarter of the 20^th century.  What else is there? Toss out the spectacles, like Miss Saigon, Phantom of the Opera (which lost the Tony awards for best book and best score to Woods yet still nabbed the Best Musical Tony) and Les Miz.  Throw away the jukebox musicals, like Jersey Boys and Contact.  Please omit any musical based on a movie (Sunset Boulevard, The Lion King).  Anyone thinking Cats should stop reading this right now.  What’s left?  Fluff like A Chorus Line, forgettable shows like Passion, and idiosyncratic shows like Avenue Q (it has a brilliant score, but it has to be performed with puppets).  The only other contenders are Stephen Sondheim’s other masterpiece Sweeny Todd (too macabre) and Evita, which was made into a movie starring Madonna; enough said.

The musical Into the Woods opened on Broadway in 1988, so its path to the film version was a long time coming.  This was mostly because musicals were considered death at the box office until Rob Marshall single handedly resurrected the genre with Chicago.  Still, even with Marshall attached to Into the Woods the Disney folks would only finance a stripped down version for a measly $50 million budget.  I wonder if part of their thinking was to keep someone from making a really subversive version of a story involving Cinderella.

The budget constraints don’t show as the film looks mah-vel-ous.  Special effects like a giant beanstalk are now done cheaply on computer, and they wisely declined to actually show Cinderella at the ball, so they saved money there.  The cast is mostly . . . well, not B list, but B+ list, except for Meryl Streep.  Streep has now crossed what I call the Lawrence Olivier Threshold, which means she has reached a point where she can chew the scenery for days and because of her years of superb work, she will be forgiven.

The book brilliantly interweaves a number of the stories from the Grimm fairy tales: Cinderella (with golden shoes, not glass), Jack and the beanstalk, Little Red Riding Hood, and Rapunzel.  These stories are notably grim, in every sense of the word—several characters are blinded by birds (or thorns), a number are killed (although this being a Disney production, a couple of murders in the original text are converted to accidents), and two characters are eaten, although they get better.

The book touches on a number of Big Themes; being careful what you wish for, proper parenting techniques (hint: abandoning your daughter to a swamp after blinding her boyfriend is not being a good mother), and the need for community. Supplementing the dialog are the songs (or is the dialog supplementing the songs?) all of which feature Sondheim’s signature wit and intricacy. 

The book manages to turn the fairy tale characters into real flesh and blood human beings.  Cinderella is an abused step-daughter living in a nightmare; Jack is a dim-witted boy whose best friend is a cow; Little Red Riding Hood is a self-assured young girl easily distracted by forbidden fruit; and a baker and his wife (the only new characters to the story) desperately want a child.  Each wants something, but when they get what they want the result is no happy ever after.

The cast, mostly non-theatrical actors, further ground the material in real emotion while playing against the fanciful background.  Anna Kendrick brings a sadness to Cinderella, appropriate for a woman treated as a servant by a wicked step-mother and two wicked step-sisters.  James Corden and Emily Blunt as the baker and his wife, have a nice chemistry as a married couple more familiar with the other than themselves.  Chris Pine brings a Captain Kirk bravado to Prince Charming.

The literalness of film creates some problem with the more theatrical elements of the play.  The script omits the character of The Narrator, which is taken up by voice overs by the baker.  The death of Jack’s cow on stage is funny, but the sight of a real cow keeling over is not so amusing.  And the film’s rendering of the giant attacking the village, obviously done off-stage in the theater, comes across less convincingly on screen.  I also had a problem with casting a pre-teen boy as Jack, as he came across as inconsequential in some of his more emotional scenes.

On the other hand, the film lends some nice touches that would be impossible on stage.  Cinderella’s song as she’s leaving the prince’s ball (On the Steps of the Palace) is nicely done as almost an internal monologue, with time frozen around her as she contemplates her options.  And of course the princes look much more dashing on horses.

It looks like the movie version of Into the Woods will nearly earn back its production budget over its opening weekend, which is good news for fans of converting Broadway musicals to the screen.  It used to be that Broadway was the source material for dozens of movies per year; now each year movies are re-imagined as Broadway shows (I can hardly wait for Back to the Future: The Musical).  [I’m not sure, but I think the last Top 40 hit to come from a Broadway show was One Night in Bangkok from Chess]  The economics of Broadway means it will never again be the source of innovation and imagination it used to be, but it is nice to know that Hollywood can still turn a Broadway musical into a big-screen hit.  It just takes 26 years.