"Into The Woods" (2014)

directed by Rob Marshall
starring Meryl Streep, Emily Blunt, Chris Pine, Tracey Ullman, Anna Kendrick, Christine Baranski, and Johnny Depp

After growing up on the romantic expositionism of Rodgers & Hammerstein, I've found that Stephen Sondheim has taken some getting used to. I guess my first exposure was to his oeuvre was hearing the lyrics for Leonard Bernstein's West Side Story, a project I happen to love -- but which makes many Puerto Ricans grit their teeth over the film's main Puerto Rican characters being played by a Russian-American (Natalie Wood as Maria) and a Greek-American (George Chakiris as her brother Bernardo). But straight Sondheim has been more difficult for me to swallow; A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum is more memorable to me for its insane story line than its songs (quick, sing me any other song besides "Comedy Tonight"). Only recently did I fall in love with a revival of 1970's Company, thanks to a recent staging featuring Neil Patrick Harris, a meditation on marriage; and Sweeney Todd, which is his most operatic work, has become one of my favorites due to the impassioned performances the work demands.

I had never experienced Sondheim's James Lapine collaboration Into The Woods in any form -- had not seen the show nor even heard any more of the score than the repeated phrasing of its title song. But the idea of fractured fairy tales has always intrigued me because so much of my sense of story and storytelling is centered on those childhood tropes penned centuries ago by the likes of Brothers Grimm, Charles Perrault, and Hans Christian Andersen -- formalized European folk stories that, when you get down to it, are actually horrifying and grim morality lessons. Into The Woods the musical looks with a wink at the perennial presence of "the woods" in so many of these tales, a mysterious place of retrospection, danger, trial, and magic that transforms those who enter there. The more dominant theme of Into The Woods -- which begins with many characters singing "I wish" -- is "Be careful what you wish for." Because what happens after you get your wish? What are the ramifications for your life and the lives of others around you? What must you give up to attain your wish? What and who have you sacrificed and was it worth it? By also touching upon the ever-changing nature of what it is to be human, the story examines what happens beyond the "happily ever after" of most fairy tales and the results aren't so pretty.

Into The Woods the movie is an attempt to take the stage action of this alternately charming and preachy little piece and put it into a semi-realistic setting. As such, I don't think it works as well as it probably did on the stage. But it's not for lack of trying.

This Into The Woods stars some extremely capable personalities: Meryl Streep (a veritable and literal blue streak of impressive acting, as always), Emily Blunt, Chris Pine, Tracey Ullman, Anna Kendrick, Christine Baranski, and a sly cameo from Johnny Depp, all under the direction of James Marshall, who did stellar work with Chicago (but also confounded us with the opulent but less cohesive 9, let's be frank). And it starts with promise.

A witch (Streep) reveals to the childless Baker (James Corden) and his Wife (Blunt) that because of an ages old dispute with the baker's father, she has cursed his descendants with barrenness. To reverse the curse, the witch tasks the couple with bringing her four items known from fairy tales. In the pursuit of these items the couple heads to the woods and crosses paths with an obnoxious, overeating red-caped girl headed to her grandmother's place; a dunderheaded kid who will trade a beloved cow for a pile of seemingly worthless beans; a conflicted, golden-gowned cinders hauler (Kendrick) weighing life amid familiar surroundings with a mean stepmother and stepsisters, or a restricted life of privilege as the bride of Prince Charming (Pine); and the witch's stolen and adopted daughter whose abundance of hair is the only entry to the doorless tower where she lives. Because we know the stories of Red Riding Hood, Jack & the Beanstalk, Cinderella, and Rapunzel, it's fun to see them given life in the first half of the film -- even when the story veers into the "I wish I hadn't just seen that," as in Little Red's confrontation with The Wolf (nice to see you, Johnny Depp, but did we really need you for those four minutes?).

After the momentum of its first half, the film's second half sags considerably. Though the audience already knows the fairy tales by heart, the author and director of Into The Woods count on this and choose not to show on screen the climactic moments of two of those tales. We do not get to see Jack face the giant and steal the goose that laid the golden eggs, nor do we get to see much of Cinderella's preparation for or interaction at the "festival" (OK, I tipped ou to the ladies', so correct me if I'm wrong) -- Cindy is whisked into a new dress by the spirit of her dead mother and sent on her way, pumpkin coach be damned, and escapes not because of the threat of being revealed in rags at midnight, but because of her own apprehension over being Prince Charming's choice.

Weighted down by issues of marital infidelity, fear of abandonment, class conflict, cowardice, disappointment, despair, disfigurement, and the ultimate downer -- death -- Into The Woods staggers like its unwieldy, half-seen, final act Giantess to an unsatisfying conclusion.

Into The Woods is a must-see if you have a real fondness for musicals and a musical Meryl. I think I'll have to see this one again at some point to get a deeper read on it. But if fantasy paired with passable music isn't your cup of RedBull, I'd say steer clear.