Nerd Movie Reviews

Into the Woods Review Part 2

What I object to is bad musicals like this one: tertiary stories with immemorable music in place of dialog sung by people who were hired for their star appeal rather than their singing ability.  The music is non stop and takes up the space normally held by dialog (thus making every dialog another glass chewing grind fest).  It is punctuated by a few moments of speaking and I was grasping on those like a man trapped under the ice trying to breath little air pockets.  The songs are really just two songs as sung by either a man or woman.  The female songs are all rising inflection ear bleeders and the male songs angsty suicide dirges.  Also I thought it was established in Sweeney Todd that Johnny Depp can’t sing (Sorry dude.  I do like you a lot but this film in not your rocket car).

Then there is the story.  Honestly I have always thought a new take on a classic fairy tale cold be really cool and every time I see a new one coming down the Hollywood outflow pipe I get my hopes up.  I keep hoping to see Snow White rewritten by Chuck Palahniuk and directed by James Cameran as an Alien sequel (image courtesy of the horror movie t-shirts).  Instead I keep getting brain softening rehash of better Disney movies like this one.  As I have said on other cruddy multi story films (cough cough New Years Eve cough cough) when you have more than one story thread you lose connection with the audience and the problem compounds itself as you add more.  This film had Cinderella, Jack and the Beanstalk, Rapunzel, Little Red Riding Hood, and maybe Thumbelina and honestly by switching back and forth between the stories you never connect with any of the characters enough to care.  If I were someone who had never seen or read a fairy tale I would have been both completely lost and apathetic.

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