"Into the Woods"

Title: Into the Woods
Director: Rob Marshall
Writer: James Lapine (screenplay and musical), Stephen Sondheim (musical)
Category: Adventure, Fantasy, Musical
Duration: 125 min
Rate:

Once again, I found myself playing catch up with last year's Oscar nominees. Now is the moment to review one of the movies that I enjoy the least throughout the award season.

It can be said that every once in a while if the plot and the cast are good and there is a proper balance between performances and dialogue, I can enjoy a good musical piece. Unfortunately, it is not the case for Into the woods.

Since the first time that I saw the trailer, I wasn't convinced about it because I already knew that there was going to be an imbalance between the musical part and the normal plot. However, I was determined to give it a chance because of the ultra talented cast and the timeless and spectacular Meryl Streep, who once again was nominated for her performance.

Plot wise, Into the Woods gives a an interesting twist to the traditional fairy tales, without moving too far away from it. The performances from the cast ensemble were spectacular, all the brilliant actors worked together to bring to life these fantastic characters and make them a little bit human in the process. The makeup and costume departments outdid themselves in helping the actors get into their parts by bringing on the screen textile masterpieces and changing their appearance.

Unfortunately, even though I can safely say that all of them had the voices to pull heartfelt performances and that both men and women showcased their talents as singers as well (we already knew that Anna Kendrick and Meryl Streep had it in them because of Pitch Perfect and Mamma Mia) for my taste, there were too many musical parts between small dialogues that made the movie hard to watch without dreading the singing all together. Obviously this is a personal consideration since I have to admit that I am not a huge fan of the musical genre. However, I believe that breaking into a song in the middle of a dramatic event made the pathos in the scene fade away, producing a less serious film and slowly removing the impact that the themes could have had without as many singing performances.

All in all, Into the Woods is a movie packed with a good balance between fairy tale and nightmares, all the characters are well outlined and well rounded. However, in my case, having to endure too many songs in between small and weak dialogues generated a less effective film that caused the classic fairy tale message to barely come across.

Till next time,

Fred

Here the trailer