Let's Go Out To The Movies: 'Into The Woods' (PG - Disney - 2 hrs, 4mins)

Alo Party Peoples.

Directed by Rob Marshall
Written by James Lapine

It looks like Broadway musicals may soon become the new YA phenomenon. This holiday season we already had a remake of Annie (it was a pretty decent kids movie), and the spectacular disaster that was NBC's Peter Pan Live!, which came off as an unintentional adult spoof of itself. Now we have Into The Woods, which starts out as an upbeat light hearted comedy musical mash-up of various fairy tales, and for what it is, it isn't bad. In fact, it comes pretty close to getting a reccomendation, until it falls apart.

But first, our story. There's a town on the edge of the woods, in which James Corden and Emily Blunt live as a childless baker's family. One day they are approached by Meryl Streep as a witch that offers to give them a child in exchange for a cow, a cloak, some golden hair and a slipper. Fortunately for the baker, the stories of Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood, Rapunzel, and Jack and the Beanstalk are all going on at the same time as they embark on their little quest. Surely enough, hi-jinks ensue as their stories start to intersect.

If that sounds like an excuse for comedy bits involving a fairy tale mashup, that's because Into The Woods is exactly that. The whole thing plays out less like a feature film and more like a series of short scenes, this is probably a holdover from a medium-shift from the stage play, along with incredibly constrained cinematography hiding the more fantastical elements in the shadows. It seems to want to be a Monty Python movie, in fact this is probably something they could have hit out of the park, but the filmmakers are unable to stick that landing and instead of being intriguingly surreal, it comes off as a meandering slog.

Fortunately, the cast is pretty damn excellent. Meryl Streep is fantastic at hamming it up as the witch, James Corden and Emily Blunt are great at making the Baker family look in way over their heads, Johnny Depp and Lilla Crawford have bizarre chemistry as the Wolf and Little Red Riding Hood respectively, Mackenzie Mauzy plays Rapunzel as a bit of a floozie to hilarious results, and they all elevate this to more than just a tepid musical.

Unfortunately, they can't save it from its meandering nature making the whole thing drag on, and on, and on. There is no reason for this to be two hours, it very easily could have been taken out in 90 minutes, and if it was I probably could have recommended this. Maybe this will one day become a cult classic ala Newsies or The Room, but for now Into The Woods suffers from a creative collapse and can be safely ignored.

Have a nice day.

Greg.B