“Into the Woods”, with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, was first staged in Broadway in 1987 and won several Tony Awards. Take note that “Phantom of the Opera” opened in the same year. For the movie, they made some changes, like removing the character of The Narrator who is now heard as a voice over. The Narrator doubles as the Mysterious Man in the stage play and he’ll later turn out to be someone else. The main characters are a baker (James Corden) and his wife (Emily Blunt) who cannot have a child because a witch (Meryl Streep) put a curse on them because the Baker’s father stole some magic beans from her. To remove the curse, they have three nights to get four items: a milky white cow, a blood-red cape, a corn-yellow strand of hair and a golden slipper.
This is where four of the Grimm Fairy Tales are interwoven. The milky white cow will come from Jack (Daniel Huddlestone, who was Gavroche in “Les Miz”) and the Beanstalk. The blood red cape from Little Red Riding Hood (Lila Crawford). The yellow strand of hair from Rapunzel (Mackenzie Mauzy). The golden slipper from Cinderella (Anna Kendrick, who’s miscast). So they all go into the woods and meet there. All their wishes are fulfilled and it seems like a happy ending, until the second act, which becomes a disaster in more ways than one when the wife of the giant killed by Jack comes down and wreaks havoc on them all.
Those who’ve seen the play know it worked because it didn’t have any inhibitions on how dark it can get, tweaking and twisting everything we know from traditional fairy tales. But since the movie version is produced by Disney, of course, they have to whitewash and sanitize and make it more child friendly. As such, the sexual suggestiveness of some of the relationships is toned down and the material loses much of its impact and no one gets to really care for any of the characters. The stage play is really darker, with so many people dying. Also, the princes of Cinderella and Rapunzel dump them in favour of Snow White and Sleeping Beauty, now totally missing in the film version. We don’t know why Sondheim (who wrote even darker material in “Sweeney Todd”) agreed to all the changes by Director Rob Marshall.
Marshall came up with a real winner in “Chicago”, but he took a misstep in the botched “Nine”, which truly fell flat in 2009. Now, he comes up with another dud in “Into the Woods”. The special effects showing the giantess are so shoddy and the musical numbers have very little energy. Everything just looks stillborn. The only show-stopping number staged with some wit is the satirical “Agony”, which worked primarily because Chris Pine invest his role as Cinderella’s Prince with much charisma. We didn’t even know he can sing. He certainly eclipses Johnny Depp as the Fox, who appears in only one sequence. Wonder why Depp accepted the role and also comes out in a bad comedy like “Mortdecai”. To top it all, the songs are mostly forgettable. The only one that registers well is “Children Will Listen” and it’s sung only in the end. The only other saving grace of the movie is Meryl Streep who evidently enjoyed herself playing the witch much than in playing the heroine in “Mamma Mia”. She does her two songs splendidly, “Stay With Me” and “Last Midnight”. If nothing else, her performance is enough reason to watch this dreary movie.
