Into the Woods (2014)

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

I am only giving this movie a 1 for the great cast, though I can't imagine what any of them were thinking. This movie was horrible

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

A total waste. No real songs, glossed over/abbreviated stories, more so-so acting than should be in a major production, and unimaginative art direction/costumes. It's supposed to be a musical, but there aren't really any songs. It's almost entirely just sing-songy dialogue that happens to have random bits of music flitting around behind it. The fairytales either need to be "fractured" for silliness or delivered faithfully. Not just muddled for convenience-sake like this. Worst of all, no progression. Most of the way through, the husband and wife characters do a whole speech/song about how the husband's character has changed, but it hasn't. There aren't any character arcs at all by that point in the movie. Oh, and the acting. Red Riding Hood is too old, too loud, and really obnoxious. The two princes seemed very hard to believe as heterosexuals, especially during their big duet. The husband/wife seemed like a modern suburban couple (of green actors). The entire set design is dark blue/green. What's the point of having a production design budget if there's nothing to look at? And who designed Depp's Big Bad Wolf costume, or lack thereof? Not only is that lazy, but it also makes the scene seem more like a weird old man hitting on a young girl than like an animal wanting to consume her. Wrong kind of creepy, guys. Finally, I'm generally annoyed at Disney's new self-flagellating trend to appease classic-fairytale-Disneyfying haters. Once Upon a Time and other such TV shows were bad enough as examples of ironically anti-Disney products. The original versions of the fairytales that Disney adapted in the past were horrific, and I was glad to see them cleaned up and made kid-friendly. Heck, civilized-society friendly. This movie is an example of backsliding. Disney needs to stop the self-hate and embrace its tradition as a positive shaper of our modern mythology. In short, skip this movie. It's abject cultural flotsam.

I'd previously watched and love another adaptation of a Stephen Sondheim musical, SWEENEY TODD, so I had high hopes for this fairy tale-based follow-up. Sadly, INTO THE WOODS is a hopeless effort that stalls more often than it succeeds, and much of the failure lies in the poor choice of casting. When two of the leads in your movie are Emily Blunt and James Corden you know you're in trouble, as both are average singers at best and Corden remains an intensely irritating screen presence. Meryl Streep headlines the cast as a goofy witch but seems to be channeling her MAMMA MIA! role a bit too much. The rest of the film strives to mix up elements of various fairy stories including Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood and Rapunzel, but the effect is slapdash and the story all over the place. Anna Kendrick is bland and her singing voice irritating, although not as much as the brash kid playing Red Riding Hood. Some of the CGI is okay but overall this is a huge missed opportunity for me.

This movie is a musical which reworks the plots of several fairy tails and weaves them into one plot. The original unrealistic sugar sweet plot of each fairy tail is slightly amended to reflect the realities of life. This yields a heart achingly beautiful movie about the human condition. The music is somewhat modern, but nonetheless accessible and at times moving. The acting is very good. I love this movie!

This movie is not good. It's all over the place, and hard to concentrate on what's going on. Zero tempo. Also, they really worked hard to make it darker then it had to be. They could have cut out a third of the scenes, and the movie would have been a little better. A mess.