If you think postmodern tinkering with the classics is simply a 21st century internet-accelerated phenomenon, then Into the Woods, both musical and now big screen adaptation, is proof positive that the mixing of old style storytelling and modern telling-it-like-really-is moralistic sensibilities goes back a lot further than that.
In this breathlessly adventurous musical mash-up of a number of old fairytales including Little Red Riding Hood, Jack and the Beanstalk, Cinderella and Rapunzel by Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine, the narrative is every bit as concerned with what happens after the happily ever after as it is with the customarily euphoric end to the tale.
In fact, what looks to be the end of the movie, about two thirds of the way through, is in fact simply a launching pad into the final climactic moments of the film which captures much of the darkness and grit of the old Grimm fairytales which were nowhere near as pretty or sanitised as the versions we are used to seeing on screen.
The world of Into the Woods is one of thievery, curses, vindictive witches, selfish behaviour, birds pecking out eyes, unfaithfulness, poverty, childlessness, true love and passing fancy, murder, selfish desires, and real world, can’t-be-escaped consequences for your actions.
In other words, it’s not your grandmother’s version of the fairytales, although there are happy endings of a sort; just not the ones you might be expecting.
And frankly that is a breath of fresh air, especially if, like me, you have a love/hate relationship with saccharine-soaked, bubblegum-pretty fairytales we see so often on our screens.
There’s nothing wrong with them of course, especially since they grant us the chance to escape the dreary reality that life can be a cruel and lonely experience with far less justice, love and happy endings than we’d like, and considerably more less than ideal outcomes that don’t quite match the happy ever after expectations of our youth.
The magic of Sondheim and Lapine’s Into the Words, brought to loud, vibrant, tumultuous life by director Garry Marshall and James Lapine’s screenplay – some songs were dropped or re-worked to accommodate the altered storyline so the movie does differ in certain respects from its stage antecedent – is that it gives us both the happy endings we long for, and a great big nose of hard nosed, uncompromising reality dressed up in a modern morality play.
The songs are as musically pleasing as ever, and the lyrics, twisting and turning upon themselves with gleeful truthfulness and playful malevolence, their rhymes a glorious cacophony of deliciously complex, intertwining wordplay, are a feast for all the actors involved, all of whom acquit themselves admirably.
Meryl Streep, as you might expect, doesn’t put a foot wrong as The Witch, a woman transformed by the effects of magic stolen from her into an ugly old hag who, in retribution curses the house of the Baker next door (the father is the thief in question) with infertility, meaning that the man’s son, played by James Corden and his wife (Emily Blunt), are unable to conceived children.
Longing to start a family they jump at the chance granted them by the witch to cancel the curse by gathering together four items – a cow as white as milk, a cape as red as blood, hair as gold as corn, and a slipper as pure as gold – in the far off woods; the only catch is they only have only three days in which to do this, their tasks having to be completed by the blue moon on the last midnight.
Thus begins a mad dash through the dark and mysterious words, which brings them into contact with Little Red Riding Hood, perfectly played with wilful sass and foolish bravado by Lilla Crawford – she treats the Wolf, played with accustomed impishness by Johnny Depp, as an annoying would be companion and nothing more – a Cindrella with major commitment issues (Anna Kendrick), a sweet natured but lacking in common sense Jack (Daniel Huttlestone) who steals from the giants with no thought of the trouble it will bring him or the kingdom he calls home, and Rapunzel (MacKenzie Mauzy) who spends her lonely days locked up in an isolated tower.
There are princely brothers of course, played by Chris Pine who woos Cinderella with silken tongue and poetic ardour but who is not the man he first seems, and Billy Magnussen whose initial foppish silliness hides a man who is honourable, trustworthy and noble in all his dealings.
And naturally there are giants, a towering husband and wife who do not deserve the fates handed to them by the fearful, selfish and all-too-human characters on the ground who aren’t certain what to do when their happy ever after moment doesn’t quite pan out as they expected.
The only failing of the movie is that it does feel in some respects like two separate movies, but any lingering sense of an abrupt break between the two distinct parts of the film is softened and then erased all together by the ceaseless, immersive flow of Sondheim and Lapine’s songs which sweep all before them in the very best way.
This is the sort of musical adaptation that reminds you of the power of song married with an engaging, clever and inventive narrative.
You hardly notice the time racing by, and if you are inclined to having classical tales you think you know and love played with till they eventually twist almost out of all recognition, then you will love the imaginative storytelling and giddily cavorting words and music of Into the Woods, a postmodern musical journey which makes skipping merrily into a dark and forbidding forest seem eminently appealing indeed.