Into the Woods (2014) (English Language)

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125min

Cast: Meryl Streep , Emily Blunt, James Corden …and more

Writers: James Lapine & Stephen Sondheim

Award winning director Rob Marshall (Chicago, Memoirs of a Geisha) brings the award winning Sondheim Broadway musical to the big screen, featuring a Disney all-star adaptation of the tale of a witch that blackmails a medieval baker and his wife into completing a quest that brings together several characters from the classic fairytales of the Brothers Grimm among others.

If you’re not a fan of musicals then this film is certainly not for you, despite the weaving together of classic fairytales like Cinderella and Jack and the Beanstalk through comedy and CGI-laden action, you will never get past the first 10 minutes of incessant storyline singing if you don’t fully commit to the fact that you are watching a musical in the purest sense.

If you’re still with us then here are a few things you might enjoy about this film, the story is very easy to engage with given that we are dealing with tales and characters most of us have grown up with but treated with a clever and humorous sensibility, the performances from a diverse cast are either strong or entertaining or both in the case of Meryl Streep and Emily Blunt, hell even James Corden comes off well in what may be the project that breaks him in the USA.

Like any good fairytale, let alone several in one go, Into the Woods sits somewhere between Parable and Fable with a unique message about how even within mythical characters there is more Grey than Black & White when it comes to their actions.

Aside from being a musical the main failure of Into the Woods is its pacing and tone, about two thirds of the way into the film and when it probably should have ended, things take a dark and tedious turn that compromises the enjoyment of the rest of the film you have just watched and ultimately does not benefit the movie apart from distinguishing it from your average happily-ever-after fairytale ending.

We can’t help feeling that if it weren’t for the last third of the film and if the producers had decided to ditch the musical aspect altogether and make a straight-up fairytale mashup, the film would have been far more entertaining and memorable, nevertheless Into the Woods is still an enjoyable albeit long fantastical musical extravaganza for the whole family.