Into the Woods (2014)

I had so desperately wanted to begin this review with the fabulous line given to Little Red Riding Hood:  “Nice is different than good.”  Unfortunately for the sake of the pun, Into the Woods is both nice and good, a fine close to what has been another good year for Disney and perhaps the more sober alternative to the relentless cheeriness of the nation’s current Frozen mania.

The film’s opener sets the stage best:  “Once upon a time in a far-off kingdom there lay a small village at the edge of the woods, and in this village lived a young maiden (Anna Kendrick as Cinderella), a carefree young lad (Daniel Huttlestone as the bean-stalked Jack), and a childless baker (James Corden) with his wife (Emily Blunt).”  The curse of a witch (Meryl Streep) sets these characters into a quest through the woods, where they cross paths with Little Red Riding Hood (Lilla Crawford), a pair of narcissistic princes (Chris Pine and Billy Magnussen), and a Big Bad Wolf (Johnny Depp).

As someone unfamiliar with the stage play – and deliberately so, in order to take the film on its own terms – I can’t help but see Into the Woods as another fabulous step forward for Disney in its current phase of self-reflexive reinvention.  Those who don’t know the play might be surprised, as I was, by the film’s clever fake-out climax which delivers the “happily ever after” about forty minutes too early and then dissects just how untenable that ending would have been – warts, discontents, and unfinished business.  It’s smart stuff, the kind of revisionist fairy tale that we’re seeing played out in stuff like the Fables comics and, more closely to Into the Woods, the true-love fallacies of Frozen and Brave.

As for the lyrical elephant in the room, Stephen Sondheim’s trademark syncopated style of “talk singing” isn’t for everyone, and even folks who liked Tim Burton’s Sweeney Todd adaptation from a few years back will find Into the Woods somewhat less melodic, governed more by motifs than catchy tunes.  For me, I liked the music enough to go out in search of the soundtrack, if only for the tour de force “Prologue,” a fifteen-minute introduction to all the characters and major plots that also gives us the whimsical eponymous chorus “Into the woods / It’s time to go...”

I like the music, but I’m sure it’s because the performers are all quite charismatic.  I can’t think of many actresses who could sell a line like “I caught him in the autumn in my garden one night!” – but, as the oft-quoted line from Modern Family goes, “Meryl Streep could play Batman and be the right choice.”  Streep, who did Mamma Mia! with more class than anyone expected, lends the Witch an equal dose of class, and she does wonders with the maternal scenes with Rapunzel as well as absolutely killing it in the witchier bits.  I honestly don’t have a bad word about any of the aforementioned cast, although I’ll throw in the two-cents that I really could have used more Johnny Depp.  Touted as a centerpiece of the ensemble cast, Depp only appears for about five minutes – which are captivating, don’t get me wrong, with his vaguely pedophilic Wolf devouring scenery and children in one fell gulp.

I think the reason I fell so fast in love with Into the Woods, aside from the equally captive audience sharing the theater with me, is that the characters are very well-crafted and – tragically, a rarity these days – eminently likeable.  Everyone, from the Baker and his wife to Red Riding Hood, has a story arc, compelling motivations, and at least one ingenious turn of phrase (either by smart rhyme or admirable manipulation of rhythm).  When things don’t go well for them, the audience feels it; when the characters triumph, we feel it even more.  This is a musical adaptation that remembers those of us who don’t already love the story, so director Rob Marshall works extra hard to get all of us swept away by the once-upon-a-times.

And while I’m on the subject of the captive audience, Into the Woods is an effortless crowd pleaser, even amid a somewhat gloomy ending.  There’s something for everyone in here, plenty of year-end spectacle and spectacular performances:  “It Takes Two” is a catchy and slyly romantic duet, where “Agony” is the musical number that’ll elicit the most laughs as the Princes compare male-privilege sorrows.  Into the Woods manages to be self-reflexive without being overtly cynical – “Careful the tale you tell” seems to be the moral of this story, and it’s evident that the filmmakers have been very careful indeed.  What more can I say?  I had an infectiously good time, escapism layered with enough narrative criticality not to feel like a brain-drain.  I’d happily go back into the woods once more.

Into the Woods is rated PG for “thematic elements, fantasy action and peril, and some suggestive material.”  There’s fairy-tale discussion of curses and creatures, though the film darkens considerably in the second half when a giantess walks the earth and several characters die in emotionally-charged sequences.  The Wolf is played as a metaphor for sexual awakening with pedophilic overtones, while the Prince’s philandering ways lead to serious questions about seduction and fidelity.  All told, though, this is no less appropriate than most of, say, Disney’s late-90s offerings.

Monday at the Movies - July 2, 2012

Welcome to Week Twenty-Four of “Monday at the Movies,” in which I tie up a few loose ends on movie series whose final installments haven’t been reviewed yet on this site.

Hulk (2003) – If I’m not yet on record as saying that Mark Ruffalo is the definitive Hulk actor, quote me on that because I’ve just rewatched Ang Lee’s Hulk, starring Eric Bana as the jade giant and don’t have a lot of good things to say about it.  For one, the plot is overfilled with antagonists with competing interests; consequently, none of them (save, maybe, Nick Nolte as Bruce Banner’s evil father) becomes terribly compelling – not Josh Lucas as a cutthroat corporate scientist, nor Sam Elliott as General “Thunderbolt” Ross.  What we do get is the curious directorial choice to drain the film of any positive emotion; all the characters are either broken or emotionless (or both), which allows some of the acting to walk the line between nuance and flatness.  Unfortunately, Jennifer Connelly as Betty Ross is the worst offender here; at moments, her affection for Bruce is touching, but at others she looks like she’s staring at cue cards written in a foreign language.  But the film’s worst offense isn’t its emotional flatness or sense of bleak despair, but rather it tampers with Bruce Banner’s canonical origin in a way that fundamentally alters the character.  I can pardon the 2008 film’s link to the Captain America super-soldier serum as an exercise in world-building, but the connection to the father is purely imagined and ultimately unfulfilling since it never quite makes sense – especially at the end when a deus ex militia ends a major fight that, once again, is more about which can be out-angst the other than it is about superheroic adventuring.  I wanted to like this, but it fell flat and ranks below the Norton interpretation.  Long live Ruffalo.

Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides (2011) – It’s no secret to readers of this blog that I’m a huge fan of the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, and for my money the series goes four for four with this soft reboot, which finds Captains Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp) and Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush) in a quest to find the Fountain of Youth – or at least prevent the dread pirate Blackbeard (Ian McShane) and his shifty daughter Angelica (Penélope Cruz) from reaching it.  The film is instantly accessible, building a new world without relying on or scrapping entirely the preceding trilogy.  Instead, the series goes off in an exciting new direction, promising a healthy spirit of competition between Jack and Barbossa for future films.  One of the highlights of At World’s End was seeing Depp and Rush out-pirate each other, a plot element that recurs here to great success.  What’s more, personal favorite McShane is delightfully menacing, unequivocally embracing his character and reveling in his mischief; think of the unswerving evil and odd syntax Al Swearengen of Deadwood, but with an enormous smoldering beard and far fewer F-bombs.  And Cruz’s Angelica brings a fun new character to the franchise, carrying on impressive repartee and even occasionally matching Depp, who brings his A-game as always.  Indeed, if I have complaints, it’s that Hans Zimmer’s soundtrack is more recycled than original, and Judi Dench has far too small a cameo role as a royal lady wooed by Captain Jack.  Though it didn’t receive much critical love, On Stranger Tides is more than satisfying, and its box-office receipts thankfully made a fifth film (allegedly in the works) a viable prospect.

Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (1987) – While the fourth Pirates film proved the franchise still had steam, Superman IV took a critical drubbing and continues to be hammered by superhero fans who regard its very name as shorthand for the worst in the genre.  But when I finally watched it this week, to my surprise there’s actually a lot in the film that works, making me wish that had been given a bigger budget and a better script editor.  Christopher Reeve is back for his last outing as the Man of Steel, facing Gene Hackman’s Lex Luthor and evil clone Nuclear (“Nucular”) Man.  The film is incredibly brief, meaning that the story is overly compressed, with characterization shortchanged for protracted and uninspiring action pieces which often cut away from the action (the film’s only explosion happens off-screen).  The screenplay, too, is weak in places, with Superman manifesting bizarre new powers and breaking his own rules several times; the secondary villains, moguls who buy the Daily Planet, are overdrawn and poorly performed, and the filmmakers apparently forgot that humans can’t breathe in space.  But there’s a good amount of the film that does succeed; Reeve and Hackman in particular are fantastic (even if the latter is saddled with Jon Cryer for a sidekick), their performances feeding off each other and nailing the heart of their character’s relationship with expressive frowns and shrugs.  Additionally, Jackie Cooper gets a terrific character arc as Perry White, who refuses to compromise his values in the face of the changing landscape of journalism.  Though the script is excessively preachy about the woes of nuclear weaponry, I’m surprised to say that I enjoyed it more than I thought it would – at least, more than the unfortunate Superman III.

That does it for this week’s edition of “Monday at the Movies.” We’ll see you here next week!