Review: Into the Woods

So what’s the difference between the recent film version of the musical Annie and the adaptation of the musical Into the Woods? Both are based on longtime Broadway favorites. Both feature Oscar-winning talent. Both were released during the holiday season in hopes of snagging family movie-going dollars. So how are they different? Well, for one thing, my teenagers liked Annie and I loved Into the Woods. You may think this is just a matter for personal preference, but it’s not. Annie was specifically designed to appeal to teens and tweens. The filmmakers took the original source material, a Broadway musical set during the Great Depression that was largely about the need for hope and optimism in trying times, and turned it into a superficial, autotuned, tarted-up pop confection. It’s still fun but ultimately lightweight and forgettable. In the same way my daughters love boy band songs and cheap jewelry from Claire’s, they love Annie.

 

On the other hand, despite its fairy tale appearance and the Disney-sanitizing that happened to certain elements of the original story, Into the Woods is a film for grown-ups. Adapted from the musical by Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine, the movie takes Cinderella, Jack and the Beanstalk, Rapunzel, and Little Red Riding Hood and weaves their stories into one cohesive narrative in which they all enter the woods looking and longing for something. They come out on the other side (most of them) different people with new perspectives on wishes and desires, on love, marriage and fidelity, and parenthood. In other words, it’s a story about growing up and losing some of the naiveté that films like Annie hold onto for dear life. It is about what happens after Happily Ever After.

The film stays mostly faithful to its source material except for the aforementioned clean-up job Disney did. It tries to downplay the more lecherous undertones of Johnny Depp’s role as the Red Riding Hood-stalking wolf, and it eliminates the less savory song the two princes sing about how badly they’d like to cheat on their wives. But otherwise, director Rob Marshall wisely sticks to the already excellent story, setting, and characters. Marshall also directed the film version of Chicago and, as in that film, he has a strong sense of how to embrace the theatricality of a stage show while still using all the tools available to a filmmaker. His musical numbers have a staged feeling to them – and I mean that in the best possible sense. They feel inventively crafted and choreographed in order to heighten the effect of the song and the story. But his camera is fluid, and he comfortably moves back and forth between the stageyness of theater and the more organic presentation of 21^st century American film. 

 There’s a wealth of talent on display throughout the movie. It’s no great shock that Meryl Streep delivers a funny, menacing performance and manages to sing the film’s most moving song through giant fake teeth, two pounds of makeup, and a fright wig. What is surprising is that Emily Blunt and Chris Pine can handle themselves admirably in the movie musical world. Blunt has a lovely voice and brings a real-world warmth and vulnerability to her role as the baker’s wife. Chris Pine, the new Captain Kirk and the most recent Jack Ryan, hams it up spectacularly as Cinderella’s prince and combines honesty and great comic delivery with the line, “I was raised to be charming, not sincere.” 

 

In the end, the film is terribly bittersweet. Certainly, there is hope, optimism, and love, but there is also death, betrayal, and heartbreak. This is a film for grown-ups because it is about becoming a grown-up, specifically a parent - learning to reconcile the compromises, gray areas, and disappointments of life with the happy-ever-after we hoped for as kids. The film is neither bleak nor naive. Like life, it is alternately hilarious, sad, lovely, and heartbreaking. Your teenagers will probably like it for the handsome princes and catchy songs, but you will like it because of what you know about life that they don't yet.