The path to the big screen for Stephen Sondheim’s fairy tale mash-up has been long and winding.
A read-through was held more than 20 years ago, with Goldie Hawn and Robin Williams as the infertile baker and his wife, Cher as the witch who commissions them to fetch bits and bobs (cow, slipper, cape, hair etc) from the forest so she can break the spell, Danny DeVito as the giant, Steve Martin the big bad wolf and Roseanne Barr as Jack’s mother, fed up with her son’s bad haggling.
A fresh cast — including Billy Crystal, Meg Ryan and Susan Sarandon — were cued up by Jim Henson in the late 90s, before the curtain fell on that, too. Then, after the success of rootin-tootin Oscar-magnet Chicago in 2002, Rob Marshall lobbied Sondheim for the rights — actually, the rights to Follies, but Sondheim suggested this one instead. Marshall passed.
Years went by. A curse seemed to fall on the director’s career. First the iffy Memories of a Geisha, then Nine, the only one-star movie Daniel Day-Lewis has ever made, then the fourth Pirates of the Caribbean film.
Then he heard a voice. The voice of Barack Obama consoling families of the victims of the World Trade Centre attacks on the 10th anniversary of 9/11. “You are not alone,” he said. “No one is alone.”
Whether or not Obama really meant to quote a third-act ballad from a late 80s Broadway hit, Marshall took it as a sign. The time was now nigh.
Trouble is, in the near 30 years since Sondheim and James Lapine wrote Into the Woods, a whole genre has explored what happens after the happily-ever-after. Even on debut in 1987 the musical was half-gazumped, half-complimented by Rob Reiner’s The Princess Bride. Since then we’ve had three Shreks, one (superb) Enchanted and countless duff others (Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunter, Jack the Giant Slayer, Red Riding Hood, Snow White and the Huntsman). Even Disney, even in the past 12 months, has given us Maleficent and a little film called Frozen. Late to the party is one thing. Twenty-seven years late to a do you instigated is simply a pity.
The opening 16 minutes showcase the best and the worst on offer. It’s just the one song — the title track — in which all our protagonists chorus together to explain their motivation for a trip to the country. There’s that baker and his wife, in this case James Corden and Emily Blunt, wizened crone Meryl Streep (in blue fright wig and yellow dentures) issuing them the shopping list, plus Jack (Daniel Huddleston, aka the chirpy cockney moppet from Les Mis), Red Riding Hood (Lilla Crawford) — quite a formidable kid shoplifting buns — and Anna Kendrick’s Cinderella, who wants to ask the advice of her mum, buried beneath a willow tree, on how to snag a ticket to the ball that night. It’s an impressive mini production in its own right; a grand logistical tee-up. But such a coup de theatre is less compelling at the cinema, where the multi-character montage isn’t so tricky too pull off. It also gives us our first taste of a score which, while it clearly has its moments, also boasts brass climaxes so blaring your ears bleed.
The rest of the film plays out so closely to the stage version you can practically smell the ushers. Those who like spotting great British character actors will have a field day: Annette Crosby is briefly spied as Granny, Simon Russell Beale slightly less fleetingly as the baker’s father and — turns out — originator of all sin. Your heart leaps to see Frances de la Tour as the lady giant, but it might as well be anyone for all the fee-fi-fo-fumming she’s assigned. More airtime is given to Johnny Depp’s splashy cameo as the wolf, salivating over Red Riding Hood’s young flesh, and to Christine Baranski, who goes full Kardashian with the wicked stepmother. Yet both feel like showreel turns, headline grabs rather than gifts to the audience.
Still: a clutch of very fine performances help see you though: predictability Meryl Streep, best at her most vulnerable; less predictably Emily Blunt, who’s fresh and very funny as the baker’s wife, consistently rising above the pack with offbeat readings. Her embarrassed encounters with the prince channel early Emma Thompson, her easily swayed heart is sweet and human in a land of cutouts. She can sing, too. It’s this shock combo which presumably earned her a Golden Globe nomination alongside Streep, rather than the much-fancied Anna Kendrick, who makes less of an impression as indecisive Cinders — a part played for tears not laughs. A word too for Chris Pine — another stealth comic — as the prince, “raised to be charming not sincere”. His waterfall duet with Rapunzel’s suitor is a high point, amping up the camp without recourse to pathos.
Production design is accomplished despite the straitened budget, yet for me there was a tangible lack of magic in the air. These woods are dank and deep, brittle in the middle, wooden round the edges. When the plot spins and that unconventional coda kicks in, there’s an almost audible creakiness. Into the Woods isn’t an unrewarding expedition. But these are now well-trodden furrows, and the route feels familiar. Fairytales aren’t supposed to feel like a hike.
Into the Woods releases in the UAE on December 25.
