Film

Lost

Into the Woods

Disney’s version of Into the Woods is utterly clueless and boring, an adaptation that renders something that was totally fun into something totally dreary. Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s 1987 Broadway hit was a slightly sick, plucky wink at the audience, an almost mocking look at the dark side of Grimm’s Fairy Tales. As captured in the 1991 American Playhouse broadcast starring Bernadette Peters, it was a 150-minute romp with an adult sense of humor. It was hardly the stuff of Disney. Director Rob Marshall has cut his film version to just over two hours, yet it feels twice as long. On stage, the music of Into the Woods was perky, tightly choreographed, consistently funny and almost frantic. In the movie, most of the songs just fart along. The singers search for the emotive, warm, soulful qualities in Sondheim and Lapine’s musical. The problem with that is the original musical didn’t really emphasize those qualities. It was more of an intelligent, operatic goof, not a feel-good musical. This is just another Princess movie, void of humor and clumsily staged. Marshall shoots most of the film on a soundstage, and while that’s admirable as far as catching live music, it has a bland, monotonous look to it. The story puts a humorous spin on characters such as Red Riding Hood (Lilla Crawford), Cinderella (Anna Kendrick), Jack (Daniel Huttlestone) from “Jack and the Beanstalk,” and Rapunzel (Mackenzie Mauzy). Most of the film’s plot centers on the Baker (James Corden) and the Baker’s Wife (Emily Blunt), cursed into a childless marriage by the Witch (Meryl Streep) after somebody messed with her garden. While Corden and Blunt sing well, their work is missing something.

Only Streep manages to capture that strange Sondheim whimsy. She is far and away the best thing about the movie. Streep takes her musical moments, like “Witch’s Entrance,” and rises above the production. “Witch’s Entrance” happens early in the film, and at a point when things are slightly promising. That promise gets dashed by Bob Grimm on the rocks in moments like Crawford’s dreadful, wrongfully earnest rendition of “I bgrimm@ Know Things Now,” Red Riding Hood’s postnewsreview.com wolf encounter recollection. Sondheim’s wit is totally lost on Crawford and Marshall. 1 Johnny Depp shows up for a few minutes as The Wolf in a stupid outfit that makes him look more feline than canine. His “Hello, Little Girl,” a song that is supposed to be rife with innuendo, sounds more like an animal who just wants to eat some food. Marshall and Depp give the number a slow, crooning presentation, taking away its former jaunty, obnoxious edge. It’s just wrong. Blunt, Corden and Kendrick deliver their numbers as if they were in The Sound of Music rather than a clever fairy tale parody. Tracey Ullman changes Jack’s Mother from a snarky bit of comic relief into a disgruntled, cranky mum. Huttlestone, who was awesome in the latest Les Miserables movie, does nothing memorable with Jack. Understandably, Marshall has completely deleted the character of The Narrator from the proceedings. The Narrator acted as a ringmaster in the stage show, and simply couldn’t transition into the movie as a physical presence. Instead, Marshall has Corden’s Baker character provide a typical voiceover that lends nothing in the ways of fun. The final act involving the Giant’s Wife terrorizing the countryside falls flat due to terrible special effects. Perhaps Into the Woods is a stage musical that has no business being adapted to the big screen. Still, in those few moments where Streep soars, I can’t help but think a director with a more twisted vision, and a studio with a little more balls, could’ve given us something more suitable to Sondheim and Lapine (who, oddly enough, participated in the film’s production). Dreamworks and Tim Burton did a masterful job with their very R-rated Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. Disney should’ve taken a few cues from them, and allowed Into the Woods to retain its sense of mischief rather than neutering it. Ω

Meryl Streep wanders through the wilderness, searching for her hairbrush.

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excellent 3 Annie Confession time: I have always hated the musical Annie, and I really hated the original movie directed by John Huston. Growing up in New York, that damn play was shoved down my throat every day when it was playing on Broadway. So I had no hope for the new film version, especially after the first wave of reviews came out. I’m going against the grain a bit on this one. No, it’s not a great film, but it’s surprisingly fun and pleasant one. It still has that awful music in it, and no amount of autotuning and remixing can fix that dreck. What makes the movie fun is a goofy turn from Jamie Foxx as the billionaire who takes in orphan Annie (Quvenzhane Wallis). The two have a good rapport, and their fun work cancels out grating work from Cameron Diaz as Hannigan (played by Carol Burnett in the original film) and Rose Byrne’s terrible singing. I admit to laughing at this movie a lot more than I thought I would, and Wallis qualifies as my all time favorite Annie. It’s a good family film.

2Horrible Bosses 2 While the first Horrible Bosses got by on the charms of its three stars, the second one winds up being a near miss. Nick (Jason Bateman), Kurt (Jason Sudeikis) and Dale (Charlie Day) have decided to go into business for themselves after the events of the first film. They wind up on TV pitching a stupid idea called the Shower Buddy, where they are seen by Rex (Chris Pine), the son of billionaire businessman Bert Hanson (Christoph Waltz). This leads to that, and the boys wind up in a kidnapping scheme involving Rex trying to double-cross his dad. The screenplay strains to bring back the likes of Jennifer Aniston as the naughty dentist and Kevin Spacey as the embittered ex boss. It also doesn’t help that Day and Sudeikis are a bit overwrought this time out, their acts getting a little tired. It should be noted that Bateman is easily the funniest thing about this movie, effortlessly smarmy as always. I laughed a fair amount of times, but felt like the three stars would be better served with all new material and premise. I like seeing them together, but they need a new place to play.

1The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies And with this, the Hobbit movies, mercifully, come to an end. No more stretching a one-hour story into three over-long films. No more Orlando Bloom making love to his stupid face with his own voice. The third, much unneeded chapter in Peter Jackson’s ill-begotten treatment of J.R.R. Tolkien’s wonderful novel is less an event than it is a final cash grab. If you should choose to see it, don’t waste your money on high frame rate, IMAX options because the result is a visual disaster. I stand by my guns; HFF technology is fine for the home theater but it sucks balls on the theater big screen. Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman) is reduced to a supporting role—in a film named after his character!—after the dragon Smaug is slain. Five armies, including dwarves, orcs, elves, men and who gives a shit, start battling over the riches Smaug gathered, with a glowing stone being the final prize. Thorin, a dwarf leader, gets “dragon sickness” and things get dumber from there. It all amounts to a big nothing, with all of the charms of Jackson’s first, masterful Lord of the Rings trilogy lost in a sea of too shiny special effects and terrible, terrible acting. A few years back, I was championing Jackson’s efforts to get this made. When Guillermo del Toro bowed out as director, I saw it as a blessing because Jackson took over. Boy, was I ever wrong.

3The Hunger Games: Mockingjay-Part One After a rousing second chapter, the Hunger Games franchise gets a little darker and introverted in its third installment. The results are perhaps a slight step back from the truly winning film that was Catching Fire, but you are still dealing with a good movie in this one. Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence), after being rescued following her complete annihilation of The Hunger Games, is being used as a propaganda tool to get at the evil Capitol government and its wily leader, President Snow (Donald Sutherland). As it turns out, Peeta (Josh Hutcherson) survived the second movie, and is being used as a propaganda tool as well (He’s being held captive by the Capitol). A lot of this movie takes place underground and in the dark, with a few good action sequences. It should be said that this only covers half of the third book in the popular series, and everything builds up to quite the cliffhanger ending. Lawrence is good here, although a couple of scenes are a bit jarring, and not in a good way. She does get a chance to sing, and she sings quite well. Philip Seymour Hoffman completed his role before his death, and he’s typically great.

4The Theory of Everything The marriage of Stephen and Jane Hawking takes center stage in director James Marsh’s sweet and powerful depiction of love in the face of adversity. The film showcases the talents of Eddie Redmayne (Les Miserables), who gives a remarkable performance as Hawking, renowned physicist and eventual Pink Floyd vocalist. Redmayne depicts a relatively healthy Hawking at first, a slightly awkward but brilliant Cambridge student smitten with classmate Jane Wilde (Felicity Jones of Like Crazy). Redmayne transforms as the film progresses, slowly but surely depicting the physical deterioration of Hawking as he suffers from ALS. Jones is equally powerful as Hawking’s first wife, a woman who refused to let him waste away after his diagnosis. The two marry knowing that the road ahead will be a rough one. Hawking’s initial prognosis had him living no more than two years, a prediction he has outlived by about 50 years. The movie is a love story first, with Hawking’s musings about black holes and the origins of the universe taking a back seat. Redmayne and Jones are utterly convincing as the couple. Marsh treats their courtship in a magical, glimmering sort of way involving awkward school dances, followed by a memorable wedding sequence. The film unabashedly celebrates their romance.

3Top Five Chris Rock writes, directs and stars in this semi-autobiographical look at a standup comedian turned film star looking for industry respect. After a string of movies about a cop in a bear suit and a bout with substance abuse, Andre Allen (Rock) is taking a break from standup and slapstick to do “serious” movies. On the day of a big premiere, a reporter (Rosario Dawson) tags along to interview him. Rock and Dawson are fun together, and a supporting cast that includes J.B. Smoove, Cedric the Entertainer, Gabrielle Union and, holy crap, Ben Vereen score a bunch of solid laughs. A sequence involving a coke-and-hooker party stands as one of the year’s funniest scenes, and Rock’s writing is solid throughout. As Chris Rock films go, this is his best starring vehicle by far. Adam Sandler and Jerry Seinfeld have hilarious walk-ons. Sandler actually hasn’t been this funny in years. Perhaps he should allow Rock to direct him all of the time. Maybe Rock can turn that whole Grown Ups franchise around.

4Wild Reese Witherspoon, in her best role since Walk the Line, plays author Cheryl Strayed, who took it upon herself to do a solo trek on the Pacific Crest Trail after some tragedies in her life. Directed by Jean-Marc Vallee (The Dallas Buyer’s Club), the film winds up not only being a fine showcase for Witherspoon, but a damn fine commercial for the PCT and those REI outdoor gear stores. The film opens on the not-so-pleasant sight of Strayed losing a toenail in bloody fashion to a wrong-sized boot, already days into her trek. It then flashes back a bit to the beginning of her hike, and takes a non-chronological approach to its plot. We see moments in Strayed’s life when she makes a lot of mistakes involving infidelity and drugs, interspersed with her experience walking the trail. While being an uplifting film about redemption and Strayed’s personal triumphs, the movie also works as an authentic and informative film about the art of hiking. From Strayed’s struggles with her super huge backpack, to her reliance on trail tanks for water, to her stopovers at community outposts along the trail, you get a sense of what you might experience on such an expedition. Hopefully, this and her small role in this year’s Inherent Vice are indicative of more adventurous choices in Witherspoon’s future.