Into The Woods

Released at the very same time of Christmas Day, Into the Woods received a fair praise, reaching to 72% on Rotten Tomatoes. Despite it’s decency, is it worth watching? Perhaps if you’re a musical fan. The movie runs for 2 hours and 5 minutes, with about 21 original songs. The story focuses on several different classic fairytale tropes, such as Jack and the Beanstalk, Red Riding Hood, Cinderella and other well-known tales. On top of that, these retellings of the stories appear to be closer to the originals, the darker and much more disturbing versions, otherwise known as Grimm’s Fairy Tales.

These fantasy arks all tie in together as the movie progresses, creating it’s own original story. If you’re willing to sit through a lengthy movie about a baker and his wife cursed to never have a child, unless they bring three certain items that all just so happen to be located in the same woods, along with several different quirky characters from various stories, then you’ve found the right movie.

Pros:

• The singing isn’t all that bad
• It has interesting visuals and color saturation
• It sticks to the realism that no character is pure evil or pure good
• It sticks close to Grimm’s Fairy Tales
• Most the songs are rather catchy

Cons:

• It’s bloated
• Some of the stories are underdeveloped
• There are more unlikable characters than there are likable
• There are songs that don’t hold up as well as others
• Johnny Depp plays as a perverted pedophile wolf
• The narration isn’t needed, yet there is anyway
• The movie tries to use suspense in a particular scene, but it doesn’t work when there wasn’t anything to worry about in the first place, making the scene entirely pointless
• There are some characters that the movie tries to get the audience to care about, however it didn’t work out

The movie Into the Woods is a colorful, inventive and a fun twist on the world of fantasy. It's a hit or miss, some enjoyed it to its full extent, some felt that it was a waste of time; its up to the viewer. For how I saw it as, it was a solid "okay." The music was catchy, the characters were infuriating, it was a just a roller coaster of odd.

“You're so nice. You're not good, you're not bad, You're just nice. I'm not good, I'm not nice, I'm just right. I'm the witch. You're the world.”

-Stephen Sondheim