The Wizard of Oz | KatePonders

Ah, that slightly concerning moment when you notice that you are the only person taking children into the film. And the creeping fear that you’ve accidentally walked into the 2.15 screening of Fifty Shades of Grey… with a seven-year-old. This is going to be a fun one to explain to her mother. My relief when it simply turns out that Disney’s latest butterball – an adaptation of Stephen Sondheim’s 1987 musical – Into The Woods just hasn’t enticed many children. And with good reason. You see, it’s not really aimed at them. No child relishes the thought that wishes are dangerous and that what happens after the happily-ever-after isn’t happy at all.

In a magical far away village…

WARNING: entering spoiler-riddled woods – please continue at your own discretion

In a magical far away village – the 10% that isn’t woodland is inhabited by either Cockney Londoners, old Etonians, or coastal Americans, who are seemingly forbidden to cross-breed – meet and watch a whole host of your favourite fairy-tale characters. Experience their lives crumbling about their ears. And listen to Sondheim squeezing every last drop from the one tune he wrote for this musical. Once upon a time there lived a baker and his wife, who were wishing for a baby. Their neighbourhood was not particularly diverse and had an unusual clause that only fairy-tale characters could own property. Little Red Riding Hood had taken up residence, but was wishing to visit Granny in the woods who – due to the old maxim, feed a cold – was in desperate need of bread. Jack (of beanstalk notoriety) lived in an old barn with mother and their entirely redundant cow, Milky White. Jack wished that they didn’t have to sell the old cow (the actual cow, not his mother). Cinderella too had taken out a substantial mortgage – or rather her father had, shortly before snuffing it – and all she wished for was to go to the – careful now – the festival. And somewhere, hidden away and unknown, is the baker’s little sister, who was stolen away at birth by a beautiful witch. She sits in a tower combing her ridiculously long hair (sound familiar?).

This is a film of two halves. The first half of the film follows Mr and Mrs Baker. As the result of a curse – a complex issue concerning the baker’s father and some exploding beans – the once-beautiful witch’s looks have withered, and the bakers are childless. The spell to lift the curse requires some unorthodox ingredients. Where are your wing of bat and eye of cat now? The baking duo must collect a series of totally random and useless objects from the woods. Well, not quite random. Thankfully, a red hood, a white cow, some blonde hair, and a gold slipper are all readily available for them to snaffle, and the bread-making pair become the catalyst for each of these classic tales. Red Riding Hood reaches her Granny, Jack gets his cow back, and Rapunzel and Cinderella get their respective princes. The music swells, I’m grabbing my coat and hastily swallowing the remaining popcorn, as they all live happily ever… Oh no wait! There’s still forty minutes to go. And I’m as lost a child in her new wolf-skin coat …in a wood. But never fear. It’s easy from here on in. The second half of the film sees all Disney rules broken: childhood dreams are shattered as good people die, princes have affairs, and no one lives happily ever after. The end. Sweet dreams, kids.

The fact that Sondheim was clearly on a tight deadline and forgot to write more than one tune is no hindrance to this production. After all, the theme and variation approach worked for Mozart, Chopin and Wagner. Fortunately, Russell Crowe failed to turn up for auditions, and as it is not sung live for some sort of gimmick or drunken directorial bet, there is no need for earplugs or a strong constitution. The singing is, without exception, a pleasure. Under Rob Marshall’s direction this film has a delicious, almost edible, aesthetic. The colour palettes give the woods the dark and frightening atmosphere they deserve, whilst making the bright flower and costumes pop. The eye and the plot are driven and directed using colour in each scene. Every frame is straight from a fairy-tale illustration, reminiscent of the Disney films that came before: the princesses, the castles, the scenery. It’s surrealist, sumptuous and the perfect way to transcribe from stage to screen.

Good old Johnny Depp, eh? He is the unsung hero of this film. Without his nobility and self-sacrifice, the film might not even have been made. But he stepped up to the plate and, a prince among men, agreed to reduce his usual $20 million paycheck and, for a smaller role, accept a meagre $1 million for his two and half minute song. What a guy! Seriously? $1 million? This is why we can’t have nice things… However, sneer all you like (and thank you, I shall) he is inspired as the wolf. Forget the hollow, dead-eyed parody of himself he has recently become – is anyone else still haunted by him dancing in that production of Alice that we should all just hunker down and pretend, for the sake of humanity, didn’t happen – and welcome the kind of reconstruction footage they aired in courtrooms during Operation Yewtree. Flitting through the trees singing ‘Hello little girl’, enticing Little Red Riding Hood with the lollipops in his jacket, Depp cuts a comic but deeply disturbing figure. Freud went to town on this interpretation of Little Red Riding Hood and there is nothing innocent about Depp. It’s brilliant, laugh out loud, and instantly iconic. Although children are already baffled and developing some pretty serious nightmares. Also I can’t believe this is Lilla Crawford’s first film. She’s so American it hurts, but she’s absolutely fantastic, and every child who braves this film will want to be her. Although they will never talk to a stranger, a wolf, or more importantly, a man doing a feeble impression of a wolf, ever again.

Why must all bad guys now have a sappy back-story? I miss the good old days when baddies were just bad for the sake of it. They were evil because they liked it that way, and no six-year-old child ever stared into the face of a parent and said, “Sure, she’s mean to Sleeping Beauty, but where’s her motivation?” That being said, I secretly quite like the idea that she genuinely loves and wants to protect Rapunzel. They clearly have a close mother-daughter bond, and the witch has no self-serving or malicious purpose, other than fear of losing her to a string of boyfriends. She is a witch driven to madness by the humans who steal, lie and cheat… and get away with it! Whilst she is judged for being a witch. However, she does slightly undermine this by losing her cool a little bit, cutting off Rapunzel’s hair, blinding her boyfriend with roses, and dragging her off to a swamp. Overplaying your hand there. Meryl Streep shines as the witch. Is she capable of not shining? And is nominated for an Oscar. Is she capable of not being nominated for an Oscar? Her performance of ‘Stay With Me’ is beautiful, impassioned and pitch-perfect. On a side (and slightly un-feminist) note, I cannot believe – in the transformation scene when she is given back her former beauty – that Streep is sixty-five. If she’s had surgery give me the name of her surgeon, if it’s makeup give me the name of the brand, and if it’s natural… is it too late for me to be related to Meryl Streep? Her genetic code may hold the key to eternal youth.

When trying to teach children the meaning of camp, simply show them Chris Pine and Billy Magnussen singing ‘Agony’. I suspect it was extraordinary-meets-90s-boy-band-music-video on stage, but Rob Marshall clearly decreed that it was failing to reach his quota for camp… in a musical about fairy-tales. So he improved it by having them caper about in leather trousers, on and in a waterfall. And some competitive shirt ripping. Manly! Children everywhere will sit confused and blank-faced while the entire adult audience rock with laughter. A shout out to Star-Trek-steering-pinenut Chris Pine, who is superb as the vapid and duplicitous Prince Charming. However, sorry Mr Magnussen. As good as you are, I would have provided the cow myself if their first choice, Jake Gyllenhaal, had accompanied Pine for this particular number.

If Russell Tovey is the history boy with the ears, then James Corden got stuck being the fat funny one. Not a nice label. But now he’s won a whole heap of awards for One Man, Two Guvnors, who’s laughing now? He’s loveable, believable and heart-warming as the baker, worrying about fatherhood and coming to terms with his own father’s abandonment. (it’s not as EastEnders as that makes it sound). And Emily Blunt, as his wife, is just so adorable and endearing… until there’s a major plot twist in the apocalyptic second half, and you slightly begin to wish that the wolf had just munched the lot of them to start with, and saved us all from the pain and confusion. Also, I envy her outfit; like tablecloth meets Helena Bonham Carter. Fantastic. She also sings, almost verbatim, a piece of Bahktinian theory. Seriously, this film is wasted on children.

Cynics and lovers of the original musical have complained that they Disneyfied it. Well, of course they did. The step-sisters still have their feet mutilated and their eyes pecked out by birds, and we still hear the gentle thumps as the body-count soars like a Shakespearean tragedy. But I don’t think anyone needs to see Jack’s mother mercilessly beaten to death by a palace official… so they took that bit out. That’s not a half-term treat for any child.

The remaining cast have been squished into one paragraph because I’m in danger of this review being as long as the film. Fifteen-year-old Daniel Huttlestone is great as Jack, although if he were Pavarotti himself, he could not entice me to watch him as Gavroche, or any of Les Misérables. Here, he’s like the lovechild of Oliver and Dick Van Dyke… and from this unholiest of unions, comes a child-star with a set of lungs to watch out for. Anna Kendrick plays feminist-statement-Cinderella, who realises her prince is a shallow moron who she didn’t get to know properly during the course of an evening’s dancing, and that they have absolutely nothing in common. But all that good girl-power sentiment is extinguished in style by McKenzie Mauzy’s agoraphobic Rapunzel, whose only rebellion from her Playboy-Bunny, brainless and passive existence is to cry. But her tears turn out to be magic, or at least cure blindness, so she can at least open a successful branch of opticians in the future. Hats off to the cameos from Frances de la Tour, prolonging her career as a giant, and Simon Russell Beale appears for ten seconds… which is totally worth it. Bet he didn’t get paid $1 million.

And so the second time the music swells, the ending really is the ending, and I can don my coat and, replete with my travelling circus of children, we can skip – like Dorothy, Scarecrow, Tin Man and Lion – back to our house, singing the song, which will now be the cause of numberless sleepless nights, satisfied with another cliché Disney ending, in which the number of morals just outweigh the number of slaughtered innocents.

PS. List of Morals in Into The Woods: (1) ~~‘Nice is different than good’~~ (sorry, there is no excuse for such terrible grammar) Being nice is not the same thing as being good. When walking alone in the woods, don’t forget that witches are sometimes right, and that men dressed as wolves who offer you sweets are planning to eat you. It’s a tale as old as time. (2) All children are special. You are not alone. You are loved and everything is candyfloss. When your parents are horribly trampled by a giant or bump their heads and die, random bakers and scullery-maids will adopt you, and support your decision to wreak terrible revenge. (3) Be careful what you wish for. You think you want a cow for a friend, but it will lead to your mother’s untimely death. And princes are really boring people.