Les Miserables
Peep is silly.
It was brilliant. From the trailers, I really wasn't overly bothered about seeing it, but some people from work were going when we finished last night, so I went along with them. I'm glad I did because I loved it.
My problem with the trailers was that from the clips shown, it didn't seem as if anyone was actually "singing" the big songs properly at all. They seemed to be talk-singing them if that makes sense. You know, to show how good they are at acting. It turns out that it mostly wasn't like that at all, and the times it did sort of happen, it actually worked.
Anne Hathaway's performance of I Dreamed a Dream is De.Va.Stat.Ing. Like, it's ridiculously brilliant. It's one of my all-time favourite songs anyway - or at least it was until that old cat lady came along a few years ago and almost ruined it - but when you see it performed in the live show, it has to be performed as a huge song due to the nature of it being on stage and needing to fill the theatre. A close up camera, sung in a much calmer, more understated and emotional way, actually works much better and you get much more of an appreciation for what a heartbreaking song it actually is.
The things I disliked are basically the same things I dislike about the stage version. Cossette: such a **** character who does nothing except act as a catalyst for other characters. It's sort of a shame since in the book she's a much "fuller" character.
Gavroche: annoying as **** character who should be scrapped completely. Kids singing is **** ing gross at the best of times. Kids singing in an "Oliver" cockney accent (inexplicable since he's a Parisian street urchin) are even more vile.
Speaking of accents, characters doing their best French rrrrrrr sound when saying the name "Marius", when for everything else they're doing cockney. You know, because that shows they're poor? Irritating and indulgent.
Castle on a Cloud: Crap song. Just crap. At least in the film they cut it slightly short.
Something that's more evident in the film than the musical though is that whole areas of the story seemed more rushed. It's nothing to do with the length of the film, but more to do with a feeling that there's a lot of the story, or a lot of the details of parts of the story, missing. That's bound to happen, given the sheer scale of the novel it's based on, but in the stage version you're more inclined to let it go I think. In the film you could really tell that you were getting more of a brief overview of the whole story - it's nothing to do with knowing the book or not, you can still feel it - than the stage version. Obviously, they're the same, so I don't know what it is other than maybe you're focusing more on the songs in the theatre, while for the film you're focusing more on plot. I dunno.
Anyway, despite the nit picking, which is more based on the source musical to be fair, I loved it. For me there hasn't been a decent film musical since Chicago ten years ago - ok maybe Sweeney Todd, but that would have benefited from better casting in the title role - and nothing on that sort of epic scale since Evita in the mid nineties.
