Movie Review: Into the Woods

Despite magical performances by a talented cast, this stage-to-screen adaptation of the popular Broadway musical is still a few steps shy of reaching a happy ending.

By Cheah Wenqi

PHOTO: Lionsgate

Into the Woods

Musical, Fantasy [PG13]
Meryl Streep, Emily Blunt, Anna Kendrick, Chris Pine
124 min

Featuring award-winning music, beloved fairy tale characters and an ensemble cast, Into the Woods sounds like a movie well on its way to a happily ever after. Despite all these strengths, however, this musical movie is still bogged down by an unnecessarily convoluted storyline and underdeveloped characters.

Into the Woods is a film adaptation of the acclaimed broadway musical of the same name. With a unifying theme of wishes, this musical-dramedy borrows various characters from popular Grimms’ fairy tales and explores the idea that all of these stories are intertwined.

While the multifaceted plot of Into The Woods might make for effective storytelling in a theatrical production, the same unfortunately does not work as well on film. Despite getting off to a strong start, a growing number of subplots quickly dilute its initial charm, and as a result, its 124-minute duration drags on far longer than it should.

This fault is due to an unnecessarily inflated cast — characters such as Rapunzel and the Big Bad Wolf seem to disappear as soon as they are introduced, and do not add any real value to the main story.

Into The Woods features a star-studded cast with the likes of Emily Blunt, Anna Kendrick and Chris Pine, and the casting choices are well-matched to their real life personas.

But veteran actress Meryl Streep is the one who shines among the rest. Playing the role of the quintessential witch, Streep lends a sense of convincing vulnerability to an otherwise villainous character. The cackling, withered witch appears clichéd at first, but as the story progresses, we learn that there is literally more to her than meets the eye.

Stephen Sondheim — the composer of the original musical — returns to supervise the music of Into the Woods, and his involvement in this rendition ensures that the songs featured in the film retain the essence of the original.

Despite remaining relatively unchanged, the songs are just as captivating as they were when they debuted on Broadway in 1987. The opening number, for example, is an attention-grabbing piece that effectively introduces the characters and their various motivations in 15 entertaining minutes.

Into the Woods is also humorously self-aware, and isn’t afraid to poke fun at the absurdity of its fairy tale roots. Halfway into the movie, two princes bump into each other in the woods, and in a clash of inflated egos, they break into a so-bad-its-good song (aptly titled Agony) in an attempt to emasculate one another.

All in all, Into the Woods will resonate with fans of fairy tales and musical theatre, and it is only the lengthy runtime and overpopulated cast that plagues an otherwise entertaining film. If you can look past those, however, Into the Woods is certainly a good start to your movie-watching year.