If “Into the Woods” was a fairy tale it would be “Goldilocks and the Three Bears.”
Neither particularly cinematic nor theatrical it is, however, musically “just right.”
It’s like “Glee” meets “Grimm” meets composer and lyricist Stephen Sondheim whose score goes where Disney fears to tread.
“Into the Woods” opens Christmas Day.
Fairy tales are cautionary allegories chock full of subtext about sex and death that Disney has gelded for years and to which Sondheim’s twitchy score and James Lapine’s book were intended as an antidote.
In transferring it from the Broadway stage to screen Disney has wrestled them back into the fantasy franchise fold, and with “Chicago” director Rob Marshall at the helm, has created a work without charm, guile or, ultimately, meaning.
It sends Cinderella, Jack of beanstalk fame and Red Riding Hood, scurrying into the woods on various missions. There they encounter a baker and his wife who have been cursed to remain childless by a witch – played by Meryl Streep.
In the first half – or act – their fairy tale wishes come true but in the darker second act we see the cost each must pay.
Lapine, who wrote the screenplay, and Marshall send the characters charging from scene to scene in a murky backlot environment. Most of the dialogue is in song and sometimes in duet, and when it is not the film is flat and ordinary.
The least effective scene is Johnny Depp’s cameo as the lecherous wolf stalking Riding Hood. The most genuine scene involves the two princes, played by Chris Pine and Billy Magnussen, singing of their “Agony” while kicking at the water in a stream like the spoiled children they are. James Corden and Emily Blunt play the Baker and his wife and Anna Kendrick plays Cinderella.
Attention must always be paid to La Streep, who here performs with more gusto than finesse. And while there is no showstopper her dramatic disappearance during the penultimate “Last Midnight” sequence is effective stagecraft.
Marshall for the most part has shunned digital effects for a visual sensibility that veers from heightened to literal, but that is neither fish nor fowl. Sondheim’s lyrically shifting, rhythmically jagged and off meter score is the saving grace, but even it feels simply restless rather than dynamically propelled by the scenes used to illustrate them.
Two and a half stars
With Anna Kendrick, James Corden, Meryl Streep, Emily Blunt, Chris Pine, Billy Magnussen, Daniel Huttlestone, Lilla Crawford, Tracey Ullman, Johnny Depp, Christine Baranski, Lucy Punch. Produced by John DeLuca, Rob Marshall, Callum McDougall, Marc Platt. Written by James Lapine. Directed by Rob Marshall. Rated PG-13, disturbing theme, peril, suggestiveness. Approximate running time: 124 minutes.
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