Into the Woods

    
      After the enormous success of Frozen (a somewhat decent film), Disney has made an abrupt change in mindset in the making of their movies.  Before, it was all about fresh ideas and CGI.  Now, it seems to be about fairy tale adaptations and musicals (admittedly with a bit of CGI thrown in), which, interestingly enough, were the exact two things that Walt Disney himself was most interested in putting to film during his lifetime.  So you could say that Disney is making a long-awaited return to the spirit of their founder.  But while this may sound like an interesting concept in theory, it can sometimes translate badly onto the 21st Century screen, as evidenced most recently by their adaptation of the Broadway success, which was itself inspired by several Brothers' Grimm fairy tales.
     The film follows four principal characters (an unnamed baker, Cinderella, Jack from Jack and the Beanstalk, and Little Red Riding Hood, played by James Corden, Anna Kendrick, Daniel Huddlestone, and Lila Crawford, respectively) on their various quests for various things.  In the first half, the movie is constantly gravitating towards "the baker", his father's foolish mistake of stealing beans and the consequences of that mistake.  His house was subsequently cursed, and in order to lift the curse, he must embark on the quest he has received from the  person whom the magic beans were stolen from, the stereotypical witch (played by Meryl Streep in typical melodramatic fashion).  What makes the quest interesting is that each item he is asked to retrieve belongs to one of the other main characters, characters he has not interacted with before and characters he will be interacting with for the rest of the movie, so the witch is unintentionally making him some new friends (and advancing the plot) with her cruel quest.  He eventually gets all the items from his friends, and creates a potion with them that makes the very old witch young and beautiful(ish) again.  This ends the first half of the movie, and the next half is singularly focused on a giant Jack has inadvertently brought down from the sky to wreak havoc on the townsfolk.
     But there's one interesting little development between those two halves that I feel I must bring up: soon after the witch successfully reverses the aging process, everyone attends a big party, where the narrator informs us that they all lived "happily ever after".  Seconds later, we find out that this is not actually the case when an "earthquake" (it is in reality just the troll) destroys a kingdom tower.  I have no doubt that Disney thought they were being clever when they added in this plot twist, and perhaps it is a little clever, but it ultimately comes off as awkward and confused, and makes the second half a bit of a slog to sit through.  Had they simply expanded a little on the first half and saved the witch's transformation from old to young for the climax of the film, they could've saved the audience quite a few eye-rolls.
     If that were the only problem with Into the Woods, perhaps I could show it some mercy and give it a slightly higher score, but the whole movie has an abundance of tiny problems, tiny problems that become particularly frustrating when you consider it's really not such a bad movie otherwise.  The character of the baker, for one thing, is barely developed at all, except in one forced scene at the end with his newborn child (Oh, did I mention he had a wife? Oh well, I'll get to that later.), and the audience can never attach themselves to him the way they can attach themselves to the best protagonists, perhaps because very little is really revealed about him in the course of the movie.  Minor characters, who do virtually nothing to serve the story, weave themselves in and out of the movie until we're exhausted of them.  This constant presence of useless characters adds to the feeling that we don't really know the useful ones.
     The songs, for all the hype that they're no doubt receiving even as I write this, are generally un-catchy, and in no universe do I believe any of them could ever attain the status of "Let It Go" as a modern standard.  "Your Fault", tenderly placed smack in the middle of the second half, is the worst one here, with embarrassing rhymes colliding with "clever" interruptions as the characters try to figure out whose fault it was that the giant is terrorizing the village in the first place.  It has no melody: I wouldn't even classify it as rap.  If you're going to make an adaptation of a Broadway musical, at least pick one that has catchy songs.
     Other minor problems include an incredibly stupid, unfunny, and disturbing joke about disembodied ankles and feet, two obnoxious princes belting their hearts out about who cares what, and the bizarre death of the baker's wife, right after she had had extramarital relations with one of the obnoxious princes.
     Still, for just about every minor flaw, Into the Woods has a minor success as well.  In the opening scene, probably the best scene of the movie, the four principal characters all sing about going "Into the Woods" in a fun, raucous, and catchy way.  And Johnny Depp is enthralling as usual as a pedophile (he's actually just really hungry) wolf who, faithful to the original story, eats Little Red Riding Hood and her grandmother, only to get stabbed by the baker moments later.  And the transformation of Streep from old witch to wise middle-aged queen was a brilliant one, if a bit early in the movie for my tastes.  Young Daniel Huddlestone proves to be quite a good singer in his song about giants that I forget the name of right now, and Cinderella's storyline is overall handled well (she has a bit of a personality crisis).
     In the end, Into the Woods is a disappointing and confusing film, for it could have been so great, and there are still lingering hints of greatness, but they are in the end overwhelmed by the inferior second half and some bad plotting throughout.  Let's just hope that Disney tries something in a similar vein to this again, and that next time they get it right, even if it seems that now all we can do is lament the failure of Into the Woods.

I give Into the Woods stars out of 10.