Into the Woods (2014) Review!!

Synopsis – A witch tasks a childless baker and his wife with procuring magical items from classic fairy tales to reverse the curse put on their family tree.

My Take – I am not a huge fan of musicals, but I do appreciate a good story when I see one! For example Les Miserables (2012) is one of the my favorite films in recent memory. While being a Disney fan myself, despite the mixed reviews, I decided to step into this one, Huge Mistake! This film is reboot of various fairy tale stories (Red Riding Hood, Rapunzel, Cinderella, Jack and the Bean Stalk), incorporating them together into one film about a couple (James Corden and Emily Blunt) unable to bare children due to the curse of a hideous witch (Meryl Streep). This witch has a beautiful daughter, Rapunzel (Mackenzie Mauzy), with long blond hair, she has trapped away in a tower with no exit. Rapunzel is spotted by a handsome prince (Billy Magnussen) and the two eventually fall in love. You know the story with Cinderella (Anna Kendrick), stuck with her nasty stepmother and stepsisters, wishing to be free, blessed with an elegant gown and slippers by the spirit of her mother located in the woods. For three nights, she flees the ball, much to the anger of a charming prince (Chris Pine) who wants to marry her.

Then there’s Jack (Daniel Huttlestone), needing to make some money for his poor widower mother, a cow exchanged for magic beans when he contacts Corden’s Baker (Streep’s witch demands a “white as milk” cow, a lock of “yellow as corn” blond hair, golden slipper, and “red as blood” cape from the Baker and his wife before three strikes at Midnight as the Moon will be Blue and restore her the beauty taken away), dropped on the ground and releasing a beanstalk to the heavens. Jack steals large coins to get his cow back. Red Riding Hood (Lilla Crawford) encounters “Mr. Wolf” (Johnny Depp) in the woods, is convinced by him to seek out a nice bouquet of flowers, forcing her to stray off the path against her mother’s orders, while traveling to her grandmother’s tree home. Wolf will gobble up both of them but Baker may just be in the right place at the right time to save them. As you might expect, the fairy tales reach what appear to be “happy ever afters” but Jack’s thievery and murder of the giant (coming down the beanstalk for his stolen golden harp) causes a vengeance-seeking wife giant to trample through the woods, villages, and castles looking for the little boy that made her a widow. Firstly people should know Johnny Depp was in for about two minutes before they killed him off. he story starts off with an incredibly repetitive and rather annoying song which is supposed to introduce the major characters but instead turns into a montage of all the major characters spouting the same lines with slight variations over and over again for 15 minutes too long. In reality, pretty much every song is the same repetitive nonsense with the exception of one song sung by the two princes which is refreshing in it provides just a little bit of humor which is utterly lacking throughout the rest of the film.

Next problem is the lack of character development. All the characters feel shallow and you have a hard time finding a character to be interested in and honestly I was more interested in the damn cow for the majority of the movie than any of the main characters. The film is also weirdly filled with really disturbing and graphic material that somehow slipped into a PG rated film i.e., Johnny Depp’s character and the rather obvious allusion to pedophiles using candy to lure unsuspecting children or Cinderella carelessly sicking her bird friends on her step sisters to peck their eyes blind in some twisted sense of revenge, the list goes on and on. Among the performances without any doubts, Meryl Streep’s performance as the witch is what really makes it. Followed by Emily Blunts & Chris Pine’s charming performances. Like I said I really dint care much about the rest. It seems director Rob Marshall has lost his touch after the Oscar winning Chicago, he has created incredibly boring, confusing, and at times, disturbing which forces you to think, how could Disney green light such a film? is Hollywood really out of fresh ideas? With such an amazing cast, director and legitimate potential, this should have been a good movie. But instead, “Into the Woods” is just plain awful & a road down towards emotional torture.