Into the Woods (2014)
directed by Rob Marshall
★★★½☆
This is the last of my all-time favorite musicals to be made into a movie, and while it does succeed in bringing the beloved stories and characters to life, overall it’s a mixed bag.
For starters, to anyone who knows the original show, this one feels badly abbreviated. I get it. The days of the 2½-3 hour long musical movie with intermission are over, but so much of the flow of this show relied on the two-act structure that removing it makes the movie feel directionless. It’s also painfully sanitized. Disney wanted a PG-rated, family-friendly, inoffensive fairly tale musical for the Christmas season, and for that they needed to remove much of the more adult content like death, infidelity, and teenage pregnancy.
What remains is an otherwise faithful adaptation with beautiful production values and performances that do justice to the source material. It should come as no surprise that Meryl Streep hits a home run as the Witch. Christine Baranski plays another cruel, manipulative parent to perfection as the Stepmother. Chris Pine and Billy Magnussen masterfully chew their scenery as Cinderella’s and Rapunzel’s Princes, respectively. It’s obvious some of the cast also studied their Broadway predecessors, particularly Emily Blunt as the Baker’s Wife, and Lilla Crawford, who absolutely nails her role as Little Red Riding Hood. I’m not nearly as fond of Johnny Depp as the Wolf, especially since it subverts the foreshadowing that’s provided by dual-casting with Cinderella’s Prince in the stage version.
There are other creative liberties taken to translate some of the stage-specific elements of the show into a film as well. For example, the Narrator is all but omitted, removing much of the show’s cheeky commentary, and is instead voiced off-screen by James Corden, who plays the Baker. Likewise, the Mysterious Man, who plays a major role in guiding our characters in the stage musical (and traditionally shares his actor with the Narrator), is completely absent here. As previously mentioned, the two-act structure is removed, which also removes the false ending of the first act and intentional mirroring of the second act. Although most of the songs made it into the film, reprises of Agony and He’s a Very Nice Prince were removed, as well as Ever After, No More, and the entire Act Two “I Wish” introduction were cut, heavily truncating the latter half.
Into the Woods is still a good movie of a great musical that mostly captures the best of both mediums. It’s also an easier way to introduce newcomers to the show with its lush production, real locations, and modern photo-realistic effects. Unfortunately, if you’ve never seen the play, you probably won’t fully appreciate the film — and if you have seen the play, you’ll probably be disappointed by the changes and omissions of the film. While I still consider the 1991 American Playhouse production with the original Broadway cast to be the definitive version of Into the Woods, this is not a bad way to consume the best parts of the show.
