FILM REVIEW: Into The Woods

After watching Into The Woods, Rob Marshall’s adaptation of Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s 1987 musical, it seems to me that ‘The Woods’ aren’t so much a place, but rather a state of mind. A place of suspended disbelief, where stories are mixed up and characters wander in and out of narratives as they please.

By default, some people will gel with this quite happily, where others won’t. It’s worth remembering that, despite the variety of upside-down, what-happened-next fairytales available for our viewing pleasure, Into the Woods was very much a forerunner back in the day. 

But back to the film. The ‘Prologue’, introduces us to James Corden’s baker and his wife (Emily Blunt) a childless couple, who are one day visited by a witch (Meryl Streep) who claims responsibility for the curse on their house which has rendered them childless all these years. They are set the challenge of retrieving certain magical items (you can probably hazard a guess) by the next blue moon in three days’ time in order for the curse to be lifted. Along the way, they meet some familiar fairy-tale faces, albeit with a twist each time, from an indecisive Cinderella (Anna Kendrick), to an arrogant, slightly sinister Prince Charming (Chris Pine), to an emotional Rapunzel (Mackenzie Mauzy) via Jack (Daniel Huttlestone) of beanstalk fame, whose best friend is a cow.

Personally I’d be hard pushed not to enjoy something Sondheim has had even the smallest involvement in, as the many questionable performances of ‘Being Alive’ I’ve watched on youtube is a testament to, but arguably as strong a draw with this production is the all-star cast. And that proved a worthy notion, although not entirely in the way you would expect. Most of the pre-release hype has been focused almost entirely on Meryl Streep, calling to mind that highly appropriate Tina Fey and Amy Poehler Golden Globes joke ‘Meryl Streep can’t be here tonight… She has the flu – and I hear she’s amazing in it’.

And amazing indeed she is, veering between cackling, spell-casting and flashing her disturbingly long nails –all your traditional witchy activities – and genuine, heart-felt laments at the loss of her beauty and youth. Oh and her magic beans, of course. She’s quite keen on them. Her performance of the powerful ‘Last Midnight’, a typically complex Sondheim number full of quirky rhymes (see ‘witch’ and ‘hitch’, ‘hunch’ and ‘bunch’) and neat summaries of just about everyone else in the plot along the way, is particularly awe-inspiring.

But I’d be willing to bet that it is Emily Blunt’s performance audiences are still talking about on the bus home. She plays the childless baker’s wife with vulnerability, warmth and vitality, all whilst cracking out a singing voice I certainly had no idea she possessed, providing some really gorgeous harmonies in the group numbers in particular.

And it’s not just Blunt who takes us by surprise. Chris Pine’s performance of the out-loud ego-trip ‘Agony’ alongside Rapunzel’s Prince Billy Magnussen was an unexpected triumph (‘Agony! Far more painful than yours, when you know she would go with you, if there only were doors’), as were almost all songs performed by the younger actors - Lilla Crawford as Little Red Riding Hood and Les Miserables’ Daniel Huttlestone as Jack. Film viewers know Anna Kendrick has a lovely voice through Pitch Perfect, but it’s great to see her stretching her cinematic comfort zone a bit here, and using those Tony nominated Broadway vocal chords to full effect. 

You can also play an excellent game of ‘spot the character actor’ in Act II, if Johnny Depp (who else?)’s performance as the infamous big bad wolf wasn’t enough for you.

Marshall has played a sensible game here in striking for the fun, playful angle in Into The Woods, rather than overly focusing on the themes of storytelling or the innate darkness in children’s stories – Cinderella’s ugly sisters cutting off parts of their feet in order to fit the slipper, anyone? The darker scenes are there, granted, but they never feel like the main focus.

This is by no means a perfect film, you do get the slight sense at times that there's a little something missing, but you can't quite put your finger on what.

With that in mind, if you enter the woods looking for a good time, you won’t stray far from the path. 

★★★★

Jen

@jenniferklarge

Follow @AssortedBuffery on Twitter
Or like our Facebook page  

FILM REVIEW: The Lone Ranger

Gore Verbinski's latest collaboration with producer Jerry Bruckheimer and star Johnny Depp has arrived amidst a whole heap of negative publicity. There's been scathing reviews from across the pond, and a fair few over here, which the trio plus other star Armie Hammer have blamed for The Lone Ranger's lack of success, in turn creating even more discussion about whether they were right to do so. What a lot of these conversations recently have in common is a lot about the box office takings and the reported $190m loss for Disney. But what of the film itself?

Well, it's actually all right.

A young boy visits an old Wild West exhibition in San Francisco in 1933 where he meets an aged Tonto (Depp) who begins to tell him the story of the Lone Ranger. John Reid (Hammer) is journeying back to his home town as a fully qualified lawyer. Unfortunately, he is also sharing the train with the violent outlaw Butch Cavendish (William Fichtner) and a Native American with a bird on his head, Tonto. After Cavendish escapes, John and his brother, Texas Ranger Dan (James Badge Dale) gather up the other rangers and set off in pursuit, but the encounter leaves both brothers dead. Well, mostly dead. John returns to life with Tonto declaring him to be a spirit walker, a man who cannot be killed in battle. Tonto has his own scores to settle and the pair reluctantly combine forces to chase Cavendish down.

A big budget Western is always a risky prospect; it's a genre that has already had its heyday and recent genre mash-ups like Cowboys and Aliens and Jonah Hex have been, frankly, terrible. Then again, the same was once said of the pirate genre and just like he did with Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, Verbinski has breathed life into the Western, bringing with him a fair slab of subversion in the process. The Lone Ranger is a well-crafted a slick adventure and whilst it doesn't match up to the quality of its swashbuckling predecessor, it certainly makes for quite the spectacle.

What is perhaps the most surprising element is the level of subversion present in this film; The Lone Ranger has been reformed from a symbol of old fashioned American values into someone who actively critiques them. For a summer blockbuster financed by one of the USA's biggest film studios, it spends a lot of its time criticising the nation's past, particularly their many sins in the name of progress. The US Army in particular comes under fire whilst that good old American capitalist greed is the biggest motivator for the villains of the piece. Even the mythology of the Wild West isn't safe, deconstructed in the framing device between the boy and Tonto.

Alongside this, there is also a sympathetic portrayal of Native Americans, long the bad guys of the traditional Western, here presented as a people fighting to keep their traditions and place in the world. The casting of Depp as a Native American is rightly problematic but there does seem to have been a concerted effort to portray the horrors against this culture effectively. The scene in which Reid meets the Comanche and learns of their struggle is one of the quieter moments, but carries an emotional weight that adds another layer to the proceedings. Anyone with the vaguest knowledge of history knows how this turns out so the scenes with the Native American characters pack a decent amount of pathos for what initially comes across as a light-hearted adventure.

The central pairing of Hammer and Depp (which sounds like a badass law firm) generates enough charisma to anchor the film and their relationship evolves nicely over the narrative. Hammer is the straight man to Depp's now familiar gurning and copes with it admirably. His arc is also well-handled as Reid starts off as a bit of buffoon, but rather than this miraculously disappear once he dons the mask, it becomes something he has to deal with and get better at doing so. Tonto is a fascinating character, no longer the sidekick but the equal, a man who is formed from violence and a need for vengeance just as much as John Reid. 

Depp's usual schtick is present but more reigned in than he has been in other films and those fearing another Jack Sparrow need not worry. The tics are there, but not exhaustingly so and his Buster Keaton-esque walk through the big climactic battle is pitched perfectly. In the supporting cast, the excellent Ruth Wilson as the token love interest makes an impact with yet another underwritten female character; Rebecca isn't exactly a wilting damsel in distress and holds her own in the action sequences, but there weren't enough scenes between Wilson and Hammer to develop any sort of chemistry. William Fichtner and Tom Wilkinson as the villains of the piece are both excellent, standing at two ends of the spectrum with the repulsive snarler and the smooth operator respectively. And then there's Helena Bonham Carter with little more than a cameo but milking every moment of that for all it's worth. Plus, she has a prosthetic leg that doubles up as a gun. Of course.

And then there's the action sequences. With plenty of locomotive-based shenanigans to play with, Verbinski pulls off some amazing moments. The first train sequence sets the bar high and there are plenty of traditional Western gunfights and chases throughout to keep genre fans happy. Yet The Lone Ranger's crowning triumph is the climactic battle which really ramps up the action and delivers a thrilling sequence that enthrals from start to finish. Before this moment, Hans Zimmer's score had been largely by numbers but when his reworking of the William Tell Overture kicks in, the film steps up a gear and the results are nothing short of astounding.

It does have its problems however. It's another victim of the curse of the summer blockbuster, clocking in at two and a half hours long, but a stern edit could have cut the majority of the bloat. Expositional scenes abound and once the action set pieces stop and people start talking, the pace can slow to a glacial crawl. The tonal shifts are also a bit of an issue with the plot dealing with some dark subject matter only to have a scene of levity a moment later. Lighter moments to offset darker ones are to be expected in an adventure film, but occasionally, the transition feels rushed and can have a jarring effect. It's a shame really because with the unusually subversive message, the chemistry of its leads and some truly outstanding sequences, The Lone Ranger could have been a great blockbuster.

As it stands, The Lone Ranger is good, not great, but it is a refreshing little oddity of a film that doesn't deserve the vitriolic reception it has received. So don't believe the anti-hype; go and be entertained.

***

- Becky

Follow @AssortedBuffery on Twitter
Or like our Facebook page

FILM REVIEW: 21 Jump Street

Channing Tatum and Jonah Hill star as two under-achieving cops who are sent to Jump Street, a revival of an 80s programme which saw young-looking police officers infiltrate high schools in order to crack down on youth crime. The original series is perhaps more famous for giving a certain Johnny Depp his first break and was high on dramatic action, rather than comedy. Directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller adopted a very different approach for this particular revival, aiming for comedy and thankfully, it succeeds.


I don't want to give away too many of the jokes here so I'm going to remain deliberately vague as to even know some of the build-up to the punchlines would give it away. As with all adult comedies, crude humour and profanity are utilised throughout, but not to the extent that they overshadow the humour and rarely get in the way of a clever joke. Safe to say though that the quickfire gag rate means that the few jokes that don't work are quickly replaced by a dozen or so that do.


The film's strength lies in its self-deprecating quality and there's a sense of knowing that permeates throughout, starting with the captain's rant about how all anyone ever seems to be doing is reviving old 80s programmes and hoping no one notices. How very meta. In some cases, this could get tired; a film that's clever enough to know it's unoriginal can sometimes go past being suitably amusing to ever so slightly pretentious. 21 Jump Street treads a fine line but it never tips over into the latter, and knowing that's a big cliche is probably one of the high points of the film.

By combining the buddy cop and high school film genres, it gives the film plenty of targets to spoof and it does so with aplomb. Right from the off, with the Eminem intro and the police academy training montage, the film starts building up the cliches; we get mismatched cops, the angry black captain, a car chase, a high school hierarchy and even a slow-motion entrance to some cool music. Rather than just present the cliches however, Lord and Miller build them up only to knock them down again. Never taking itself too seriously, the film revels in the audience's expectations; we see a car chase, we know something is going to explode. Rather than going for the cheap spectacle though, it's built into an extended joke with a very funny punchline. This is the same for the high school cliches, cleverly observing that school has changed from the regimented hierarchy it used to be to a place where the popular kids are environmentally conscious, gay and drug dealers. Jenko's theory as to why this is the case is perhaps my favourite joke of the entire film. And, as with all good high school films, it ends at the prom. Though it's probably not any prom you'd like to attend.

Performance wise, the central duo are perfect in their respective roles. I'm not the biggest fan of Jonah Hill because in every film I've seen him in, he plays... well, Jonah Hill. His character Schmidt is your typical nerd in high school, unable to ask a girl to the prom or run 100 yards particularly quickly. His character arc is actually quite sweet given that he's able to relive his high school years only this time on the popular side of the crowd. This helps to overlook the slightly weird romantic subplot with Molly (Brie Larson), a high school senior. The real revelation in this film though has to be Channing Tatum in his first real comic role. Previously seen glowering in either romantic dramas or explodey-actioners, Tatum has rarely been given a chance to present anything other than an overhanging forehead macho character. Jenko could have just been another dumb jock, seen in countless other films, but instead, Tatum gives the role depth, combining the dumb jock with the kid who just wanted to be popular in high school. He also demonstrates great comic timing and is trusted with a lot of the best lines in the film. Plus, he mimes a mean lightsaber battle.

Elsewhere, Ice Cube puts in a great performance, nearly stealing the show with his 'angry black captain' speech. Dave Franco, younger brother of James, as main drug dealer Eric sends up the popular kid stereotype brilliantly and I don't think it will be long before we see much more of him. Then of course, there's the cameos. We knew from the start that Johnny Depp had agreed to cameo and, though a long time coming, it's well worth the wait. When he does appear, alongside fellow Jump Street alumnus Peter Deluise, it's one of the most hilariously meta gags in the whole film, ushering in the new Jump Street era with some knowing references.


As with all comedies, Jump Street falls apart slightly when it comes to the plot. Although the central plot of infiltrating the high school drugs ring works and the ultimate reveal of the dealer is suitably surprising, the film does have a couple of pacing issues. Because of the melding of action and comedy, it was always going to be a struggle to make sure the story held up all the way through the film. The plot inevitably gets in the way of the fast-paced gag rate and everything slows down as a result. Thankfully, the entrance to the prom reinvigorates it all and instead of a limp third act that could have reduced the film to mediocre, we get a suitably hilarious finish to a great comedy.


If you're in need of a hearty giggle or craving a spoof of several genres all at once, 21 Jump Street makes for a very funny evening and, if you've already seen it and want more, be comforted to know that the inevitable cash-in sequel is most definitely on the way.


****


- Becky