Yesterday I was quite overjoyed to find my copy of the Into the Woods Blu-ray in my mailbox from the Disney Movie Club. I had purchased it not having seen the big screen adaptation. How could they get it wrong, I thought. Who could make that musical anything but magic especially given that it's from freaking Disney, the home of magic.
I'll admit upfront that the title is...somewhat misleading. I fully acknowledge that any movie adaptation of a thing (book, musical, video game, or even an adaptation of a previous film) is going to be "wrong" in many aspects to those who love the original. There can't help but be changes and favorite moments all screwed up to fit a director's vision and things cut to fit the time constraints. The Hobbit films being the proportional opposite shows that the reverse can also ruin an adaptation. What I cover here is not necessarily nit picky, but I suppose I'm the least qualified to judge that. If you've only seen the Disney adaptation and not the original Broadway Cast performance that came out a decade ago...then you're safe for the most part. If you've seen neither then this is going to be all sorts of spoilery. You've been warned and my obligation is satisfied in accordance with the ancient rites and thusly shall not carry the sin of spoilering into the next life. May it be on your head now.
First and foremost, my biggest issue is the complete absence of the Narrator. In the original the Narrator is an actual character. While I understand that having a proper Narrator as a character wouldn't quite work in a movie setting (and I admit the looping it so that the tale being told at the beginning is the baker telling his son for the first time is cool...but not nearly as cool) it rips out some of the play's supports. It would be like surgically removing ribs and vertebrae and expecting a body to function at the same capacity. When the characters turn on the Narrator and feed him to the giantess that is a pivotal moment. There is a very Meta thing going on where the Narrator is almost a godlike figure who is keeping the story going. With the Narrator we are sure of a happy ending and yet the characters see him just as another character. The Narrator begs saying "But you'd be lost without me. I'm telling the story." The Witch replies, "Well, maybe we don't like the way you're telling it." The metaphor here is ejecting God from the world and expecting everyone to play nice and life to actually be better than a world with him. The cast willingly sacrifice the narrator to save their own skins but this is pointedly the moment when the whole story goes to hell. Before there was sure to be a happy ending no matter what challenges were faced. Cinderella's wicked step sisters were a trial to be endured on her way to becoming a queen. Little Red left the path and was eaten by a wolf but saved and learned a greater lesson. After the Narrator is gone Jack's mother dies needlessly, the Baker's Wife is killed just by being in the wrong place at the wrong time (under a giantess' foot), and Granny is killed when her house is knocked flat. Suddenly chaos rips everything from them for no reason. The case could, and likely should, be made that without the Narrator/God their life goes from fairy tale to reality and that's a good thing.
As a companion to this I felt that the Witch's role was somewhat diminished. While no one could do as good a job as Bernadette Peters, I thought Meryl Streep did a wonderful job. In the play the viewer gets the sense that the Witch is really the only adult in the room surrounded by children. The curse that her mother placed on the beans is only revealed in "The Last Midnight" and even then it's just the barest of winks, not meant to be a major plot point. I've said many times that I find it amazing that by the end of the play I find myself being entirely on the Witch's side. As she said, "I'm not good, I'm not nice. I'm just right." Of all she has the clearest view. When she leaves them all she has had it, like any parent would, and decides that everyone needs to grow up. It's very similar to the scene in Practical Magic where the aunts figure out what is going on, the two used magic very foolishly and were being haunted by the ghost of an abusive boyfriend, and pack up the kids to leave the sisters to deal with it on their own. Yes, people were likely to get hurt, perhaps even die, but some day children must grow up and deal with the consequences of their actions.
A third issue is with the age of Jack and Red. Naturally, to legally face a grueling play schedule, in the original production Jack and Red were played by adults and played pretty much as teenagers. This changes what you can do with the characters and the subtlety of certain lines in the song. The two each have stories that encounter some sort of sexual undertones, Jack with the Giantess and Red with the Wolf, and they come away "knowing things they never new before". With these two as children the dynamic gets skewed. Instead of the Wolf wanting something young and pure and legal, he comes off as a pedophile. Both versions are pretty creepy and pervy, but the Disney one is much more disturbing. As two over teenage years they can learn lessons, under that they would be more traumatized and the events more tragic. With Jack it makes more sense as a teenager due to how his mom reacts to him. If he's under ten then there's little reason to think him much of a fool for trading the cow for magic beans. How do you expect a child to be able to accurately place value anyway? If he's a later teenager then, yes, cuffing him about the ears for being a fool makes more sense.
When we came to "You Are Not Alone" this is where the stage production truly shines out far better. With the stage production you realize that this is a crystallizing moment. Everyone has to grow up because this is the darkest moment they've ever faced. Red's Granny is dead, the Baker's Wife is Dead, Jack's Mum is dead, Cinderella is very alone, mother and father dead already and she's just rejected the philandering Prince Charming (charming...not sincere). This is as bad as it gets for each character. No Narrator or Witch to guide them they reach out to each other. If the plan doesn't work and they die then at least they will not die alone. That is a huge moment. And in the Disney version it falls flat. There's not urgency or darkness or desperation needed for that to be the bonding moment it needs to be.
As to the Princes...I liked the actors they got for them, however there was an "Agony" with no "Agony Reprise"? That's cheating the audience. To not show them at their most ridiculous and least honorable is pretty unsatisfying for those who know the play. Much in the way that in productions of Peter Pan the actor who plays Mr. Darling also plays Captain Hook the tradition for this play was Cinderella's Prince also plays the Wolf. This doubling up adds commentary and depth of meaning to the material that you just don't get by wasting Johnny Depp for 5 minutes onscreen.
Speaking of double roles, the Narrator usually also played the Baker's Father. I thoroughly missed his song. Sure they got the essence across in the lines in the Baker's head, but that wasn't sufficient in my view.
As a final point, there was much lost just in the fact that this wasn't an acting company with months of prep and decades on the road. I don't blame Disney for this much really. This part was completely out of their control. Nothing can replace actors that haven't just played the characters, they've LIVED them. The tension between the Baker and the Baker's Wife has brewed for years. The two actors in the original company probably know the history of every argument they've ever had that never appeared on stage. Red has been a sassy little thing for a decade and so when the "You talk to birds" line comes it's said with a "Seriously?! Crazy much?" attitude in the play rather than the "Huh" in the movie. The Princes are far more smarmy because they've spent year after year competing and chasing princesses rather than just petty pretty boys. This experience simply can't be translated to film unless you get the original cast, and I know very well that no movie studio wants that to happen for very good reasons.
I do give it props for putting Sondheim's work out there. He is a national treasure and the more people that can see that the better. My daughter is now obsessed with two musicals (this and Phantom of the Opera which I didn't find to be terrible. They kept the bones and joints in tact for which I am grateful.) and that can't be bad. I do, however, wonder how the inevitable movie adaptation of a book adaptation that is Wicked will do. I've never seen it live so I may not be as picky about it.
Pax,
W
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