Into the Woods

That tagline is oddly apt for any adaptation.

Once upon a time...

Fan: I wish!

...in a far off kingdom...

Fan: More than anything!

...there lived a young fan...

Fan: More than life!

...a mighty studio...

Fan: More than jewels!
Disney: I wish!

...and a movieless musical.

Disney: More than life!
Fan, Into the Woods: I wish to go to the cinema!

Okay, I broke the meter there a bit, but seriously; writing Sondheim filk is really hard.

Let me relapse into prose. Once upon a time there was a musical called Into the Woods. It wasn't a huge musical like Cats or Oliver, but it was clever and witty and did solid business and was much loved from the time of its first release. Naturally, with the boom in big-budget adapted musicals running on from Chicago to Les Miserables and all, there came a time when the clever little musical met a big, important movie producer, and they planned to go into business together.

Now, in a lot of cautionary tales, this is the point where we tell how our hero was jacked by the movie studio and forced to become nice and clean and decent and dull, but actually, that isn't what happened. Maybe because James Lapine, the original lyricist, was still alive to write the screenplay, or maybe because the composer, the mighty Stephen Sondheim, was still alive to glower at Disney with the force only another icon of American culture could muster against the House of Mouse if they got it wrong, but whatever the reason... Disney did good.

I'm not going to say that Disney's big screen adaptation of Into the Woods is perfect, because I'd be lying, but it is good. I'm not going to say that it isn't softened, because it is - you simply can't maintain all of the subtext if you cast actual children as Little Red Ridinghood and Jack - but it's not been completely bowdlerised. Also...

MacKenzie Mauzy as Rapunzel, Billy Magnussen as Rapunzel's Prince, Anna Kendrick as Cinderella, Johnny Depp as the
Wolf, Emily Blunt as the Baker's Wife, Daniel Huttlestone as Jack, Meryl Streep as the Witch, James Corden as the Baker,
Lilla Crawford as Little Red Riding Hood and Chris Pine as Cinderella's Prince

Let's see who we've got in this thing.

In song/introduction order, Cinderella goes to Anna Kendrick, who is pretty much of a big thing and more importantly can both sing and act (I give you Pitch Perfect and 50/50 in evidence), Jack is veteran stage and screen Gavroche Daniel Huttlestone and the Baker and his wife are played by James Corden and Emily Blunt. Of these, Corden is the weakest singer, cast more for his mix of comic timing and big, adorable sad face, but is by no means bad.

Then we have Lilla Crawford, a former stage Annie, as Little Red Riding Hood, Meryl Streep as the Witch - I hear she's been good in stuff before - Johnny Depp in a somewhat flashy cameo as the Wolf,  Mackenzie Mauzy as Rapunzel and Chris Pine and Billy Magnussen as the Princes. Mauzy and Magnussen are the wildcards, but Magnussen and Pine pretty much nail 'Agony' with a histrionic waterfall performance, and that's what your Princes need to do in Into the Woods.

The film sticks pretty solidly to the plot of the stage musical, although for timing purposes it removes a number of songs. The big departure is in terms of pacing. Lacking an intermission, the film omits the first act closer, 'Ever After', and the second prologue 'So Happy'. This requires the removal of the reprise of 'Agony' by compressing the timescale between the two acts, which makes me sad.

This actually casts a more unflattering light on the characters' dissatisfaction with their happy endings than is present in the stage version, which is perhaps why they are never allowed to sit as endings. With no time passing for a natural pregnancy, the Baker's Wife is magically impregnated by the Witch's spell (providing slightly darker overtones to the Baker's refusal to hold 'his' child.) Cinderella has become disenchanted with palace life in a matter of weeks and her Prince makes his move on the Baker's Wife pretty much on his wedding day. Rapunzel's madness and death are slashed from the plot, and instead she rides off with her Prince early in the act.

ETA: Ultimately, the problem that this engenders is that the characters and their problems become superficial in the timescale. 'Oh no, it's been all of three days since I magically popped out a sprog after a five minute pregnancy and my husband still won't bond with the baby.' The opening line of 'so Happy' is 'Once upon a time later' and without ever after becoming that later, there is no context for the dissatisfaction which is the core of the second act. Ultimately, this weakens the second act, rendering it more superficial than the first when it should be more substantial.

In some ways the most glaring and most subtle of the changes is the removal of the Mysterious Man/Narrator, and all the metatextual elements that go with him.

In musical terms, in addition to 'Agony', the director and ensemble make a meal of 'Into the Woods' (although this makes me regret the loss of the later ensemble numbers all the more) and Streep rips it up for 'The Last Midnight' (although the effects volume was a little overwhelming in the scene itself.)  The other showstopper is 'On the Steps of the Palace', performed not as recollection but literally on the steps of the palace, with the world slowing to a stop as Cinderella sings her thoughts. Despite the range of experiences the actors bring to the project, no-one was glaringly off-style and where called on to sing together, the voices complement.

A number of new songs were proposed for the adaptation, written by Sondheim and Lapine, but never made it in. This is far preferable to the glaring Oscar-bait bullshit in the middle of Les Miserables.

This is perhaps not the greatest adaptation of Into the Woods that could be made, but I think in terms of adaptations that were ever going to be made, this is pretty strong. While clearly pitched at a younger audience than the stage show and frankly overselling Depp in the publicity, it retains enough of the darkness and subtext of the original to remain Into the Woods in substance as well as name.

If I were looking to criticise beyond the compressed second act, I would probably pick out that the cast is very, very white, but it's quite possible that in this instance the black talent was all off filming the new version of Annie.

Into the Woods: It's not perfect, but it is pretty damn good.