Review: Into the Woods

Rife with colorful characters and brimming with the signature rhyming banter of Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine, Into The Woods is the closest thing this Christmas season to a rewarding family film. Just don’t expect things to come with a ribbon wrapped around them. If the mashing of familiar Grimm fairy tales into a not-so-conventional tale sounds like your idea of good fun, you wouldn’t be far wrong. Although the Rob Marshall adaptation of the 1987 stage production loses some steam in its second half, it is a well-cast showcase for the likes of Meryl Streep, Anna Kendrick, Chris Pine, Johnny Depp (as the Big Bad Wolf), and especially the amusing Tracy Ullmann and the excellent Emily Blunt.

Little Red Riding Hood, Cinderella, Jack and the Beanstalk and Rapunzel all blend together in a tale that goes for a darker sum than any of its parts. Yet even its most featured villain, The Witch (Streep) isn’t all bad. She may have kidnapped and imprisoned Rapunzel, sister of the baker (James Corden), but there’s a like-ability to her nonetheless as she pops up, time and again, with a seething impatience that seems almost tongue-in-cheek. And when she performs the heartfelt letting-go-of-a-child ballad “Stay With Me,” we are surprised by her sudden compassion.

Sondheim and Lapine are set on turning upside down deep-set expectations. Much has been made of the relative harsh direction the book takes–it seems to go further and further into despair as it gies along. Yet what Into The Woods does best is saunter back and forth between spoof-like merriment and somber reflection on the human condition (“No One Is Alone” may be its most memorable song). In stirring up the primal emotions unleashed long ago in the fairy tales of our youth, the story and the songs head in strange and often stirring directions. One moment, there’s a perfectly light scene between The Baker’s Wife (Blunt) and the playboy Cinderella’s Prince (Pine). The next moment the bickering, surviving members of the cast are banding together to fight off the villainous female giant. Throughout, the magical forest, which seems like a creature itself, contains strange, sudden winds and trees who have a life of their own. The atmosphere may be ominous but it is essentially forgiving.

Kendrick (see her as the lead in the forthcoming musical Five Years Left) is quirky fine and in great soprano voice as an almost anachronistic Cinderella, who seems far more contemporary than those around her. Streep, heavily made-up with witchy ugliness until a second act transformation, displays her usual command, and Ullmann, as the cranky, nagging mom of Jack, reminds us of her incredible range as a comedienne. Blunt continues her climb into the uppermost ranks of film actresses. As The Baker’s Wife, she takes charge of the film’s central “plot,” a scavenger hunt for the likes of a slipper, a cape, a cow, and a lock of hair. Despite the relative lack of memorable melodies, her acting and vocals are a large reason the film works as well as it does.

3.5 This Isn’t West Side Story But It’s Pretty Damn Good…3.5 out of 5) stars