TwittReview: Into the Woods is a Crash-like adventure blending the Brother’s Grimm versions of Cinderella, Jack and the Beanstalk, Red Ridding Hood, and Rapunzel into a musical adventure tied together by an original story plot narrative. Flat story, slow pacing, distracting songs takes away any positives from the casting. Grade: 2 out of 5

Overview:
Based on the Tony Award winning Broadway musical of the same name, a blended-musical mash-up of four Brother’s Grimm fairy tales with a plot narrative tying all together. Written by James Lapine with music/lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and directed by Rob Marshall, the story tells of a baker and his wife who must make a deal with their witch neighbor to undo a family curse put upon their house. What follows is a crash-like story where the baker and his wife cross paths with Cinderella, Jack, Red Ridding Hood, Rapunzel and their stories.

What worked:

• With a cast that consists of Anna Kendrick (Cinderalla), Johnny Depp (Big Bad Wolf), Chris Pine (Cinderalla’s Prince Charming), Emily Blunt (the baker’s wife), Tracey Ullman (Jack’s mom), Christine Baranski (Cinderalla’s step-mother), James Corden (the baker), and Meryl Streep (the Witch) – you have some star power here.
• Allowing the darker elements of the original Brother’s Grimm stories shows that his is not the Disney animated movies. However for this plus there must come a minus. See next section.

What didn’t work:

• A lot! Not only was the story all over the place and hard to follow at times, the singing just took away from everything. There was a lot of cross-singing where many characters were singing about different things at the same time. Talk about trying to follow the bouncing ball. Just way too much happening at one time and it pulls you away from the story in front of you. After a while every time a song would start, by the end all I heard was “blah blah blah”.
• Disney lists Into the Woods as a comedy. I think I laughed at three sight-gags.
• The entire last act was dark with death and destruction all over the place. Even Marvel’s The Avengers gave us some upbeat moments with action and destruction, Into the Woods just created a last act that was mindless, long, and didn’t add ANYTHING to the first two acts which ended on a very upbeat and happy moment. Allowing the darker elements of the original Brother’s Grimm stories was a plus, but the minus was that this last act had death that just came out of nowhere.  We had an entire countryside destroyed by two giants (one indirectly and the other directly) and without going into spoilers one character dies because she kissed someone that she shouldn’t have.
• Johnny Depp as the Big Bad Wolf was a wasted performance as his song was annoying and his gimmick was tired. I would have rather had a CGI wolf on-screen to reflect the human nature of the wolf but still have him in animal form.
• Fairy Tale logistics just make no sense to me. Jack and his mom are hungry as their cow is dry and can no longer produce milk. So Jack is tasked to take the cow to the next town to sell him for nothing less then five pieces of gold. Silly question, why not just eat the cow? Were Jack and his mom Vegan or Vegetarian? Early on in the movie, Cinderalla calls the birds to help her cleanup lentil beans that were poured on the floor by her step-mother. Later on the birds tell Cinderella about the event that happened early leading to the death of the character that I mentioned. They also agree to help her with the giant and the plan of attack. Red Ridding Hood then questions Cinderella that she can talk to the birds. Really?? Didn’t you just have a conversation earlier with a wolf??

Final thoughts:

Not all Broadway shows should be made into movies.  Into the Woods is one of the Broadway shows that should not have been turned into a movie.  Into the Woods is a long, drawn-out, tedious movie that feels longer then the two-hour run time actually is. A great cast is wasted with an all over the place story and songs that detract from said story.

Rated PG for for thematic elements, fantasy action and peril, and some suggestive material with a run time of two-hours.