Into the Woods

Plot: It's a musical mashup of Cinderella, Jack and the Beanstalk, Little Red Riding Hood, and Rupunzel, woven together with plot line involving a witch and an infertility spell. After Cinderella's blissful wedding, there is a dark plot twist and the character's struggle together to survive. [imdb]    [photos]

Review: Into the Woods is a lot of fun. The lyrics are clever, and the plot is fast moving. I had not seen the stage play, and I thought it was clever and enjoyable.

I liked how the familiar fairy tale stories were adapted for a single plot, because they were familiar and still fresh.

This is an adaptation of a beloved Broadway musical, so the songs are in the Broadway style.

They were developed for the stage to be witty, flirty, to advance the story. I liked the music, so I really enjoyed the movie. Someone who did not enjoy the music would not have been kept interested by the plot or the action. Some of the scenes is deliberately campy or self-satirical to be funny, especially in the fairy tale, first half.

Some of the actors were fun. I liked Anna Kendrick as Cinderella. Cinderella is a sympathetic underdog. Emily Blunt & James Corden, as the Baker & his wife, are the heart of the movie because they link the stories together. They have married-couple banter that is asynchronistically from the 21st century. Chris Pine's Prince Charming is deliberately campy and full-of-himself in a funny way. He says, "I was raised to be Charming, not sincere." I was not a fan of Meryl Streep, so always looked like Meryl Streep playing a witch. Young Daniel Huttlestone as Jack was great.

I liked the movie after the plot twist because is shows that "Happily Ever After," isn't real, and that there are still problems. It also shows that people continue to die, get hungry, and fight wars. I liked how they abandoned their fairy tale goals to work together.

Low lights were places where the scenes were made for a stage rather than freshly reimagined for the movie screen. For some reason I did not like Lillia Crawford's Red Riding Hood -- she was a kleptomaniac zombie.

Cast: Anna Kendrick, James Corden, Emily Blunt, Meryl Streep, Lilla Crawford, Chris Pine, Johnny Depp

Directed by: Rob Marshall

Written by:  James Lapine; composed by Stephen Sondheim

Rating:3.5 4.0 stars:. I enjoyed watching it a lot. Whether you like it depends on whether you like Broadway-style songs and the stage-play style.

More: Red Riding Hood: "It is nice to know a lot,  . . . and a little bit not."

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