Film: Into The Woods

Director: Rob Marshall
Written by: James Lapine & Stephen Sondheim (music)
Cast: Emily Blunt, James Corden, Anna Kendrick, Meryl Streep, Johnny Depp, Chris Pine, Lilla Crawford, Mackenzie Mauzy, Billy Magnussen, Daniel Huttlestone

I didn't know a lot about this film before I went to see it, but it's basically the story of a baker (Corden) and his wife (Blunt) who venture into the woods to try and break a curse put on them by a witch (Streep). Along the way they meet Little Red Riding Hood (Crawford), Cinderella (Kendrick), Jack and the Beanstalk (Huttlestone) and Rapunzel (Mauzy).

The stories are all cleverly intertwined throughout the film. Each story is told separately, while still somehow relating to the overall narrative, held together by the main story of the baker and his wife. I felt that there were two flaws in the narrative. The first was that it seemed to reach an ending point when there was a twist, which resulted in at least an extra half hour! Because the film was quite long I was quite ready for it to end where it did! The second flaw was during the twist, which I won't say too much about as it would be a spoiler! But I felt that there was a huge lack of emotion from one of the characters when there should have been a lot more.

Something I thought could be played on more was the parody aspect of the film. There were quite a few isolated parody moments of the fairy tales, but I do feel these could have been expanded on.

I couldn't fault the acting and I was pleasantly surprised by James Corden, as I didn't think I'd be able to separate him from the stereotypical comedy character I'm used to seeing him play, but the fact that I didn't even think about that proves how well he did. I'm always impressed by Emily Blunt, she seems to be able to seamlessly slip into any role. The stand outs for me were the two young actors, Lilla Crawford and Daniel Huttlestone. I thought their charactertisation was brilliant and I'm hoping to see a lot more from both of them.

I thought the music was great and I usually don't warm to musicals the first time I hear the music so that's a big compliment! I did expect the music to be good as I love the music from Sweeney Todd, which was also written by Stephen Sondheim.

Altogether it's a film definitely worth seeing, but could definitely have been better! 3/5.