Filmed family musicals don't get much better than Into the Woods.
Into the Woods
Grade: A-
Director: Rob Marshall (Chicago)
Screenplay: James Lapine from Stephen Sondheim musical
Cast: Anna Kendrick (Up in the Air), Meryl Streep (Doubt)
Rating: PG
Runtime: 124 Min.
by John DeSando
“I was raised to be charming, not sincere.” Cinderella’s Prince (Chris Pine)
That pretty much sums up the mash up of fairy tales called Into the Woods. The familiar characters are there like Rapunzel, Witch, Little Red Riding Hood, Bad Wolf, Jack of the Beanstalk. Yet as in the quote, not all are as we remember them—their wishes that have come true have changed them just as the woods have given them a chance to be someone other than the heroes we made.
Stephen Sondheim created this amalgam of famous fables and let the woods help them become real like the rest of us. Because this is a Disney product, it begins with each character wishing for something each did not have. Writer James Lapine and director Rob Marshall proceed in a glorious collection of songs to show how you may get what you wish for, lamentably. They are helped by Dennis Gassner’s near perfect English countryside production design, which can make you feel imprisoned even in the expansive woods.
The evil engine of this hodge-podge is the witch next door (Meryl Streep), who demands the barren Baker’s wife (Emily Blunt) and her husband (James Corden) fetch some objects like gold hair and slippers, among others, if they wish to have a child. While this witch has a sardonic side (quite amusing at times), she still rules with the kind of power that can raise cows from the dead! Because Streep knows how to deliver menace and irony in the same breath, her Oscar nomination is well deserved. Not that she doesn’t have enough already.
Anyway, Into the Woods is true to its themes, carrying wish fulfillment to its right conclusion and with it a lesson learned about being happy with what you have. A leitmotif about the demands of parenthood and the intense love necessary to keep the family going is also powerful—embodied in the Bakers and beanstalk Jack (Daniel Huttlestone) and his mom (Tracey Ullman). Accompanied by first-rate songs, filmed musicals don’t get much better.
“Some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.” C.S. Lewis
John DeSando, a Los Angeles Press Club first-place winner for National Entertainment Journalism, hosts WCBE’s It’s Movie Time and co-hosts Cinema Classics. Contact him at JDeSando@Columbus.rr.com
