I’m not a fan of musicals and it was really only boredom and the (apparently misremembered) idea that this received good reviews at the time that made me watch it at all on a streaming service. The list of musicals I actually enjoy is pretty short and maybe I’ll put them up in a group review some time. Suffice to say I demand a plot and good music if I’m going to watch a musical and enjoy it at all. Ok, I’ll settle for a semblance of a plot, some humour and a reasonable music.

Into The Woods, I learned after sitting through the whole thing, is a Steven Sondheim… ditty? I gather that means it has some kind of pedigree. You know that thing that dog breeders use to give their animals horrific genetic disorders and brain disease. Exactly that kind of pedigree in fact.

Cast

The cast is fine, I mean, there’s nothing wrong with them as actors except perhaps the two brats playing Jack The Incredibly Poor Cow Salesman and Little Red Riding Metaphor for Innocence. I’ve no idea who they are and I suppose they’re only kids so can’t be blamed. Meryl Streep has musical form though and has previously managed to take make a successful film with an equally great cast who aren’t remarkable singers. Anna Kendrick is the only one I’m fairly sure can actually sing well.

Plot

Essentially Cinderella (Kendrick), Jack, Rapunzel and a childless baker (James Corden) and his wife (Emily Blunt) and Little Red Hoodlum all end up crossing paths in the same woods. Meryl Streep plays a deus ex machina (a witch to be specific) who makes a bargain with Corden and Blunt, they retrieve things from all the others or she won’t lift the curse that keeps them without a child.

That’s it. As a straight film, it could be a pretty good plot. Problem is, it’s not a straight film, it’s a failed musical. Presumably written along the lines of the South Park episode that features Sondheim and his contemporaries as filthy old devils whose purpose for writing musicals is rather less grand than a love of music and fiction.

Music

That’s ok though, right? It’s a Sondheim musical and people love those. Presumably, because the music is amazing, right? Full of humour, essential to the plot, emotional and you know, rhyming where it should and having the characteristics of lyrics. Well no, not so much. I’m not saying the music is bad, Justin Bieber is bad, this music is incredibly offensive. It’s like having a fire hose turned on your eardrums. It perverts everything that’s considered essential when you’re writing a song. I think they believed the were making Bohemian Rhapsody but actually, they’re just talentless hacks making me want to curl up in a ball and weep for the state of the human race.

There is just no excuse in a musical for having one person in a conversation speaking in prose and the other singing but also in prose, set to music, badly. It’s unbelievably awkward. It’s a really simple format, you speak the spoken lines, someone says a line that’s a bit like a song lyric, then they break into song. Sometimes they sing solo, sometimes they get a backup. You just can’t entwine the two like that and hope it’ll sound cool. Especially if the song is rubbish in the first place.

Honestly folks, I can’t stress this enough, please don’t buy this film or even bother watching it on a streaming service. Other than rampant criminality you couldn’t really find a worse use of your time. If you spend a couple of hours cleaning your oven, scouring the bathtub you’ll not only find it more satisfying but probably it’ll be more enjoyable too.

If someone you know has recently offended you or let you down or voted for Brexit though you could buy them this as a kind of back handed punishment. You never know, they might watch it and feel a bit of your pain.