OK - movie review time!!
I was first very skeptical about the quality of this movie because I love, love, love the play. I played french horn in a production of it, then later, directed the show for a Christian nonprofit group. Both were great experiences for me, so I'm kind of emotionally attached. Plus, I love Sondheim.
If you like musicals - SEE THIS MOVIE! If you don't like musicals....see it anyway, and just deal with people bursting out into song fairly often. The plot is so intricate, and much of the action takes place during the songs, so it's not your typical musical where the action stops, someone sings, action, song, etc., so I think that even the non-musical lovers will not be bored.
The plot takes four familiar fairy tales, Jack and the Beanstalk, Cinderella, Rapunzel, and Little Red Riding Hood, and adds a fifth, that of a childless baker and his wife, who find that they had been cursed to be barren by their next door neighbor, the witch, played by Meryl Streep. In what at first becomes a quest story, the witch tells the baker and his wife that to lift the curse and have a child, they are to recover four items: a cow as white as milk, a cape as red as blood, hair as yellow as corn, and a slipper as pure as gold. In addition to lifting the curse, this will also restore the witch's youth and beauty.
From here on, all the characters interact with each other as their tales intertwine. The tales stay fairly true to the Grimm versions, so if all you know of fairy tales come from Disney movies, you are in for a rude awakening. When we have our familiar endings to our well-known tales, the movie is far from over. The characters still have to live with the consequences of their actions, whether it is theft, using deception to obtain a quest item, or manipulating others, etc.
Comparisons to the play:
If you are familiar with the play, you may or may not have picked up on that the witch cannot touch any of the quest items. The movie does a much better job at explaining this. This is the reason the witch sends the baker and his wife to recover the items instead of doing it herself.
The special effects are, of course, better than they could ever do in a Broadway production. The witch's effects are what one would expect from Hollywood, and I loved how they did a freeze frame on the Prince as he was chasing Cinderella down the steps of the palace. Knowing that she would run from him again, he had arranged for pitch to be put on the stairs so she would be stuck. The prince is frozen in place throughout her song as she is deciding to keep running or to let herself be caught. The special effects in the movie make it much clearer that these thoughts take place in a fraction of a second rather than the actual several minutes of the song.
One of the things that the movie misses, (still comparing to the play) is that one of it's important themes is weakened, that "nice" and "good" are two different things. Johnny Depp's wolf is very menacing, but way less sexually suggestive and seductive than the Broadway version. Many Christians might think that this is a good thing, but it makes Red Riding Hood's song after her experience at granny's house make not as much sense. In the song, she is wiser for her experience, and less naive, but also a bit regretful about not being as innocent. Her "nice is different than good" statement doesn't have nearly the impact of the stage version. Lilla Crawford, however, gave an outstanding performance as Red.
The prince (Cinderella's Prince), played by Chris Pine, is delightfully smarmy. I was surprised that he sang rather well too. "Agony," the duet with his brother (Rapunzel's Prince), captured all the humor of the play. His comedic timing was also spot on as he seduced the baker's wife. Historically, the play has always had the wolf and this prince played by the same actor. I've always considered this casting an important statement about the "nice" vs. "good" theme. They missed it here. I believe that Chris Pine (who I always though of as just a moderately talented Hollywood pretty boy before) could have pulled it off, but I guess they wanted the star appeal of Johnny Depp as the wolf, even though his performance was little more than a lackluster cameo. Big mistake. I like Johnny Depp, but not in this.
Meryl Streep as the witch was quite good! It is hard not to compare her to Bernadette Peters and her Broadway performance in the role she originated. Streep's witch, though funny at times, was way more scary than Peters'. Both are outstanding performances...comparing apples and oranges here.
Picking Nits:
In the play, the narrator is on stage, and at one point, actually becomes part of the story. He is also "the mysterious old man in the forest" and is also revealed to be the Baker's father. In the movie, there is a narrator, but he only comes in a couple of times and is not really necessary. They did away with the character of the old man in the forest, but showed a conversation with the Baker and his father's apparition. It seemed out of place - I think they should have either included the character as he was in the play or done away with him entirely.
More nitpicking:
I was kind of bothered by the dialogue between Cinderella and the Baker's wife in which they talked about the ball and dancing with the prince and all while the baker's wife was trying to get the shoe from Cinderella. Cinderella had an American accent, and the Baker's wife had a British accent. That was kind of weird for me, since they were presumably from the same area.
So go see it! It's a very entertaining morality play with some pretty good music. There is one scene of suggested adultery. Also the stepmother cuts off a toe of one of the stepsisters, and the heel of another to try to get their feet to fit the shoe - this is true to the Brothers Grimm version. This happens off screen and the action is actually less bloody than the stage version (we did it with Vienna sausages and a chunk of Spam). There is also some death, but the mortality rate is not nearly as high as the stage version. So, maybe not for the little 'uns, but probably OK for tweens and young teens.
Now it's sounding great again!
