2014 - INTO THE WOODS, another attempt at a film musical

Here we go again, another shot at making a contemporary musical in a genre that is mostly dead these days.  Into the Woods is based on the Sondheim Broadway musical which was a reworking of classic fairy tales with a modern twist.  Sondheim and his associate James Lapine's big insight in this film is that fairy tales don't always have happy endings.  This is something that I will not be going through life worrying about.

As is the trend with contemporary musicals these days.  The cast is made up of actors who can barely carry a tune.  But the nice thing about a Steve Sondheim song is that they mostly don't worry about tunes it's mostly a lot of rhythmic patter.  Between the non singers and the non songs it's fairly easy to juggle a singing performance out of an actor who is not a professional singer.

The chief exception to this non singer actor stuff is Meryl Streep.  After slaughtering about every ABBA song she got near in Mama Mia.  Streep takes a shot at murdering some of the songs in this film.  Streep tops it off with her very broad performance as the witch.  I know the witch is probably supposed to be a larger than life character but she could at least come off like she wasn't phoning it in with a megaphone.

The basic fact is that there is no longer the talent or resources to make film musicals anymore.  This genre died out with MGM in the 1950's.   That a mediocre film like Into the Woods could get decent reviews and box office show how far the musical genre has fallen.

 124 minutes, screenplay by James Lapine.