Thursday, April 2, 2015

Film Friday: Into The Woods (2014)

I didn’t know what to expect from Into The Woods. The trailer looked good and I do enjoy a good musical. And this one apparently did pretty well on Broadway and in London for over three decades. It seemed to have good actors in it too and great effects. So it probably should have been pretty good. Yet, I’m going to use this film to discuss what I really despise about Broadway.

Plot

Into The Woods binds together several fairy tale stories to create a new story. The plot is meant to come across as complex and clever, but honestly it feels derivative, predictable and muddled and far too cynical.

The story follows a whiny Baker (James Corden) and his Wife (Emily Blunt), who want to have a child. The reason they can’t have a child is because their neighbor, an evil Witch (Meryl Streep) cursed the Baker’s father because he stole magic beans from her garden. Her curse was that the Baker’s father’s family tree would be barren.
Streep, however, has decided that she wants to undo the curse. She doesn’t give a reason for her change of heart, but it seems that undoing the curse will give her back her youthful good looks, which were stolen from her by some other curse. To end the curse, the Baker must collect a white cow, a red cloak, a golden slipper, and some golden hair. So the Baker sets out into the forest to collect these items.

As you might expect, he trades Jack some magic beans for his white cow. He saves Little Red Riding Hood from the wolf. His Wife steals Cinderella’s (Anna Kendrick) slipper. And the golden hair comes from Rapunzel, who was his father’s daughter until she was taken by the Witch and hidden in the tower. Of course, each of these stories is corrupted to a degree and the characters all seem to be randomly roaming the forest as the plot needs.
Fast forward: the Baker gets the stuff and the Witch reverses the spell. That’s where the film should have ended, but it doesn’t. Instead of rolling credits, as should have been done, the film falls way off the rails. The Prince (Chris Pine) marries Cinderella and then proves to be unfaithful because he’s a prince and little girls need to be warned that they can’t rely on princes!! (Sorry, I was channeling a feminist.) He fools around with the Baker’s cougar Wife, who the writer seems to think is only living up to her potential by having an affair. Rapunzel learns to hate her mother the Witch for a reason she already knew long ago. A giant attacks and get this... it’s a woman! Ha ha! OMG Isn’t that clever?! Well, of course it is... because the characters tell us so four or five times. Several characters die because life is about suffering when you work in theater, and the story just kind of winds down with no one living happily ever after because leftists don’t know jack about how to end a story.

Why I Liked This Less and Less As It Dragged On

Where do I start about what I hated about this film. How about at the beginning?
The story felt derivative. And I don’t just mean because I saw Once Upon A Time first. The problem is this: the writer took the most well-known fairy tales and wove them together in the exact way you would have expected. No attempt was ever made to get off the most obvious path. For example, if you’re going to use Cinderella, the most obvious way would be to create a need to steal her slipper. Ditto on Red Riding Hood’s cloak and Rapunzel’s hair. Yet the writer never thought to make them important to the story for some other reason. Thus, there isn’t a single moment where you are surprised in the least.

The characters are awful too. I hated them all and just didn’t care what happened to them. The Baker was unbelievably whiny. Even worse, because liberals believe intent is what matter, we were supposed to like these people even though they spent their time abusing and defrauding everyone they met because they claimed to feel bad about it. Huh? The Princes (there are two) were gay lounge lizards. Jack was a thug in the body of a child. Red Riding Hood was as wooden as a robot and seemed psychotically cold about death. Cinderella was full of anguished indecision in every scene, but the things she anguished about weren’t things anyone cares about. And all of them, every single one, was self-obsessed. The end result was that the characters came across as rotten, whiny and unpleasant. They aren’t people you want to see succeed... or spend time with.
The songs were crap too. Did I mention that this was a musical? Yeah. It was the type of musical with very few actual songs, but lots and lots of dialog being sung as pretend songs. This is something I hate about many Broadway productions. It seems that there are three or four standard song formulas Broadway uses. Depending on the emotion of the scene, the correct formula song is chosen and the dialog is jammed into the form with the proper rhyme scheme. The end result is that you spend the whole time hearing them sing whatever stupid lyrics they have while humming the more famous versions of the same song from prior musicals... “Isn’t that ‘The Candy Man’ from Willy Wonka?” What’s more, the songs are so forgettable and generic that you can replace them with their counterparts from other musicals and I seriously doubt anyone would know the difference.

This is lazy and it’s annoying. It also encourages the actors to engage in melodramatic Broadway acting styles. “Golly gee whiz (swing arm like a newsie).” I find this super annoying. Why? Think of it this way. How sick are you of Johnny Depp playing the same drunk over and over on film these days? This is the same thing... only it’s being done in musical after musical for decades regardless of who the actor is. Talk about annoying!

The writer was an ass too. Three crimes against writing come to mind here in particular. First, it was obvious that the writer carefully avoided doing anything clever for the first four or five hours of the film... ok, it was only 124 minutes, but it felt twice as long. At no point does this writer ever trust the audience to use their brains; everything is spoon-fed to you and served on white bread. Secondly, the writer has insecurity issues. I know this because the story is full of moments where the writer has characters tell you how clever the writing is. If you find yourself doing that, it’s because you suck. And third, the ending is total crap.
The film should have ended about twenty minutes sooner than it does. But it didn’t. Instead, the characters venture back into the woods for no valid reason. Once in the woods, the writer has them engage in out-of-character moments (like having an affair) so he can effectively slander them one by one. Then the film just kind of ends. This entire scene is confusing, pointlessly dark, pointless and it doesn’t fit in with the rest of the film at all. And the only reason I can see for doing it is that the writer is a cynical prick who thinks it’s clever to twist these characters into rotten people. Since attacking these characters was a popular activity on the left at the time this was first written, I assume this was ideological.

All in all, I have to say that this film stunk. The characters are impossible to like. The story is mind-numbingly boring and predictable until the ending, which is random and hateful. The songs are entirely forgettable and derivative. And the story seems intent on making you hate fairy tale characters.

This is Broadway at its worst. Thoughts?

22 comments:

BevfromNYC said...

I'm guessing you're not a Sondheim fan...;-) I haven't seen the movie, but I saw the original production when it hit the boards in the '80's. And it was fun and dark (both trademarks of Sondheim). It's classic Sondheim and what I would call a "fractured fairytale" and it preceded Once Upon A Time by 20 years or so. It makes a MUCH better stage production because of the limits of space, btw. No one I know who is an aficionado of Sondheim (including myself) remotely liked this movie. This just looks like an overblown Hollywood extravaganza so that Meryl Streep can keep working...but cut them some slack. It is Sondheim's 80th birthday this year.

Jason said...

From what I read, the play was broken into two main acts, and the part of the movie after the characters get their wishes, where you say it should have ended, drew from the second act, but they cut much of it for the movie adaption, so what you're left with isn't much and makes it feel tacked on.

I didn't know anything about the movie going into it. I heard that it was based on a play, but I knew zilch about the story. I didn't even know it was a musical until I started watching it. I can't say I'd see it again. I liked Red Riding Hood and Cinderella, and Johnny Depp livened things for the brief part he had, but everything else was meh or boring. I guess the point of the play is "what you wish for sometimes isn't all it's cracked up to be." Maybe it played out better in the play, but it didn't work out very well in the movie.

AndrewPrice said...

Bev, Correct, I'm not a fan of Sondheim. It is rare that I enjoy his musicals. And it's not the darkness that bothers me about his musicals, it's the lazy songs. He almost never writes anything that I feel is memorable or all that interesting. By comparison, I can remember almost everything Andrew Lloyd Webber writes.

In terms of the movie, I haven't seen the play so it is hard to compare them. But the movie is well shot and beautiful, it just feels lifeless and stupid. Some of it feels like a play whereas other parts feel like a movie. And it just seems to flop around without any real direction.

BTW, Streep was easily the best thing in the movie.

AndrewPrice said...

Jason, I thought Johnny Depp was really good in this, but he's only in it for about a minute. Sad.

That would make a lot of sense if the ending came from a second part that they just cut to pieces. In the film, it comes out of nowhere and feels like they just didn't know how to end the story. It would make more sense if there was a lot more to it that was simply ignored.

BevfromNYC said...

"[Sondheim] almost never writes anything that I feel is memorable or all that interesting. By comparison, I can remember almost everything Andrew Lloyd Webber writes."

There are two camps in theatre - The "Sondheim" camp versus the "Weber" camp. Being in the Sondheim camp myself, I agree that his music is not "hummable", but it IS memorable. His scores are pretty much the same...it's his lyrics that set him apart and the subject matter. You really have to listen to his music to "get it". You have to think of his shows as opera not "musicals" anyway. How many operas to you walk away from humming?

AndrewPrice said...

Bev, I hate camping! ;-)

Believe it or not, I have heard quite a bit about the Sondheim versus Weber war and I hear it can get quite nasty. I find that I like a much higher percentage of Weber's work than Sondheim's work. I guess I prefer the hummability.

In operas too, I tend toward the Mozarts over the Wagners... hate Wagner.

BevfromNYC said...

LOL! Btw, unlike many in the Sondheim camp, I do not necessarily believe it makes you a lesser person that you don't really like Sondheim...necessarily. ;-P

Kit said...

Andrew,

I enjoy Mozart and Wagner. If push came to shove I would say I prefer Mozart but I do like them both.

I guess I enjoy Weber over Sondheim but I still like some of Sondheim's earlier stuff (West Side Story, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum). Have not heard much of his later stuff.

Kit said...

I've never understood the nastiness of the "rivalries." I guess it is because I usually pick and choose songs, movies, and books. I've always been more of a "song' fan over a "band" fan. I like certain Rolling Stones songs and certain Elvis Presley songs.

Anonymous said...

I don't have a lot to add to this. I haven't seen Into The Woods. I don't know anything about Broadway. I can't stand Once Upon A Time. But I just have to say this; How in the hell can anybody despise Wagner?! I once wrote a letter to the Chief of the Cincinnati Police Department requesting that we have a selection switch on our siren box that plays The Ride Of The Valkyries. Nothing, and I mean nothing, fires you up to fight like The Ride Of The Valkyries. The administration didn't accept it. A genius is never accepted in his own time. Ah well.
GypsyTyger

Rustbelt said...

Andrew, just to clarify an earlier thread, this is why I avoided "Once Upon A Time" at first. I thought it might turn out exactly how you describe this movie (which, thankfully, I haven't seen).

In fact, this reminds of a staple during my time on the forensics team in high school. A popular trend in the prose competition was politically correct fairy tales. Thankfully, I was going through a "young liberal" phase and it didn't annoy me too much. (If I had my mind of today, I'd probably make like a comedy club audience member and plot my own demise just so that it would all come to an end.)
And no, I didn't recite any PC fairy tales. I mostly stuck with Edgar Allen Poe.

And that's too bad about this film. I mostly like fairy tale movies and musicals. I just don't get around to them very often. I probably watch more of them if I had a girlfriend, but that's still on the "to do" list.

BevfromNYC said...

But in true "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" scenario, when Disney produced their first Broadway musical "Beauty and the Beast" both camps became allies against the evil "Mouse" encroaching on their territory....

AndrewPrice said...

Bev, I'm glad you still consider non-Sondheimers to be good people. :D

I can imagine that Disney's entry must have been pretty shocking. Someone like Disney entering the field could easily change the way things are done forever and that would be bad for the people who are already there.

AndrewPrice said...

Kit, It's like East Coast versus West Coast rap... only with less shooting and fewer uses of the n-word.

AndrewPrice said...

GypsyTyger, You are indeed a man ahead of his time! LOL!

In all seriousness, that's the only Wagner I like. We went to see one of his operas and it was death. It just went on and on and on and on with the same boring bit repeating forever.

"I can't believe it's not buuuuuuhter."
"Oh yes, it's buuuuuhter."
"I can't believe it's not buuuuuuhter."
"Oh yes, it's buuuuuhter."
"I can't believe it's not buuuuuuhter."
"Oh yes, it's buuuuuhter."
"I can't believe it's not buuuuuuhter."
"Oh yes, it's buuuuuhter."
repeat 4.7 million times...

AndrewPrice said...

Rustbelt, The attack on fairy tales pissed me off in the 1990s, but I understood it. The reason the left sees fairy tales as the enemy is because fairy tales teach ways of thinking and values that undermine everything the left wants people to believe. So by the time they get the chance to indoctrinate kids, they are shocked to discover that these fairy tales have inoculated most kids to their ideology.

Hence, in the 1990s, they tried to destroy fairy tales and replace them with Marxist crap.

AndrewPrice said...

Bev, LOL! "The enemy of my enemy is the happiest place on earth."

Kit said...

Andrew,

Wagner gave us one of the best Bugs Bunny cartoon.

Kit said...

"The attack on fairy tales pissed me off in the 1990s,"

That still annoys me.

tryanmax said...

I actually saw this just last night at my fiancé's prodding. I personally thought the film was an exceptionally faithful Broadway to Hollywood adaptation. That said, I can't stand Sondheim on stage or on screen. Ok, except West Side Story.

Agreed about the laziness of Sondheim. Listen to "Maria" followed by "Joanna" and tell me they aren't the same song.

Anonymous said...

Kit; Bravo! I had forgotten about that. I killed de wabbit. What have I done? One of the best Bugs Bunny cartoons indeed.
I know it's not a fairytale but speaking of the reworking of classics, did anybody catch Dwayne Johnson as Bambi on Saturday Night Live last week? Hilarious. If you missed it it's on youtube.

BevfromNYC said...

I'm glad you still consider non-Sondheimers to be good people.

Andrew, I did not say "good people"; I said just not "lesser people"...:-B

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