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Les Miserables Movie Review
Dec. 25th, 2012 08:29 pmMerry Christmas or whatever you celebrate...
Had a lovely day, walked on the beach with my dad, went to Les Miserables with my mom.
Me: Well, that was definitely a tad better than The Hobbit.
Mom: A tad? It was WAY better than the Hobbit, they aren't even in the same ballpark.
Me: Yes, yes, you're right, of course. (It's Sad, but true.)
Les Miz is oddly 157 minutes to the Hobbit's 166, and one film not part one of a three part triology. This is odd, because Les Mis is based on a 3 and 1/2 musical adapation of a 1400 page novel that has a cast of thousands and multiple subplots, while the Hobbit is based on a book of maybe 3-400 pages if that, and maybe ten characters and one adventure. There is simply more story to mine in Les Miz than in The Hobbit. And you can tell watching the films.
Plus Tom Hooper who directed Les Miz (also the director of The King's Speech) cut two of the songs from the movie, while Jackson added unnecessary extraneous data from appendixes and The Silmarrion also by Tolkien. Rule of thumb - with movie adaptations, it works better when you edit information, not add it. The screen can convey things differently than books can, so you often require less...exposition. But enuf. It's all terribly subjective anyhow.
If you hate musicals, but love fantasy films - you'd love the Hobbit and not even bother with Les Miz, and if you hate fantasy films and love musicals, you'll do the opposite. I'm the rare breed who adores both. Went in with low expectations for both...because they are hard to do and I'd read mixed professional reviews. The Hobbit was okay. Les Mis blew me away at times. Don't get me wrong, it was far from perfect - all films are, but there are moments...that blew me away.
Les Miserables has been adapted into a film or tv series more times than I can count. Most recently for French TV by Gerade Depardiu and into a 1998 film starring Liam Neeson and Claire Danes. Neither were musicals. In the 1970s, it was a UK TV series with Anthony Perkins (Javert) and Richard Jordan (Valjean). According to the Wiki list the first adaptation on film was in 1897 by the Lumiere Brothers. Most recently there were two French adaptations - the aforementioned tv series in 2000 and the filmed version of a stage play.
It's no wonder... as:
Does the movie live up to the hype? Yes and no. Hugh Jackman and Russell Crowe while superb in their roles, do not have the vocal pipes to handle the upper ranges of some of their songs, their voices do crack and rasp...but it hardly matters, in some respects the less than perfect vocals add a gravitas to the film, that is sorely lacking in dubbed musicals. In that respect it reminds me a little of Whedon's Once More with Feeling - the lack of perfect vocalist in the role lends it a sense of reality and gravitas that is often lacking from a more polished performance or rendering.
( Read more... )
Will most likely buy it on DVD at some point.
Overall rating? A
Had a lovely day, walked on the beach with my dad, went to Les Miserables with my mom.
Me: Well, that was definitely a tad better than The Hobbit.
Mom: A tad? It was WAY better than the Hobbit, they aren't even in the same ballpark.
Me: Yes, yes, you're right, of course. (It's Sad, but true.)
Les Miz is oddly 157 minutes to the Hobbit's 166, and one film not part one of a three part triology. This is odd, because Les Mis is based on a 3 and 1/2 musical adapation of a 1400 page novel that has a cast of thousands and multiple subplots, while the Hobbit is based on a book of maybe 3-400 pages if that, and maybe ten characters and one adventure. There is simply more story to mine in Les Miz than in The Hobbit. And you can tell watching the films.
Plus Tom Hooper who directed Les Miz (also the director of The King's Speech) cut two of the songs from the movie, while Jackson added unnecessary extraneous data from appendixes and The Silmarrion also by Tolkien. Rule of thumb - with movie adaptations, it works better when you edit information, not add it. The screen can convey things differently than books can, so you often require less...exposition. But enuf. It's all terribly subjective anyhow.
If you hate musicals, but love fantasy films - you'd love the Hobbit and not even bother with Les Miz, and if you hate fantasy films and love musicals, you'll do the opposite. I'm the rare breed who adores both. Went in with low expectations for both...because they are hard to do and I'd read mixed professional reviews. The Hobbit was okay. Les Mis blew me away at times. Don't get me wrong, it was far from perfect - all films are, but there are moments...that blew me away.
Les Miserables has been adapted into a film or tv series more times than I can count. Most recently for French TV by Gerade Depardiu and into a 1998 film starring Liam Neeson and Claire Danes. Neither were musicals. In the 1970s, it was a UK TV series with Anthony Perkins (Javert) and Richard Jordan (Valjean). According to the Wiki list the first adaptation on film was in 1897 by the Lumiere Brothers. Most recently there were two French adaptations - the aforementioned tv series in 2000 and the filmed version of a stage play.
It's no wonder... as:
Upton Sinclair remarked that Hugo set forth the purpose of Les Misérables, "one of the half-dozen greatest novels of the world," in the Preface:[2]
So long as there shall exist, by reason of law and custom, a social condemnation, which, in the face of civilization, artificially creates hells on earth, and complicates a destiny that is divine, with human fatality; so long as the three problems of the age—the degradation of man by poverty, the ruin of women by starvation, and the dwarfing of childhood by physical and spiritual night—are not solved; so long as, in certain regions, social asphyxia shall be possible; in other words, and from a yet more extended point of view, so long as ignorance and misery remain on earth, books like this cannot be useless.
Does the movie live up to the hype? Yes and no. Hugh Jackman and Russell Crowe while superb in their roles, do not have the vocal pipes to handle the upper ranges of some of their songs, their voices do crack and rasp...but it hardly matters, in some respects the less than perfect vocals add a gravitas to the film, that is sorely lacking in dubbed musicals. In that respect it reminds me a little of Whedon's Once More with Feeling - the lack of perfect vocalist in the role lends it a sense of reality and gravitas that is often lacking from a more polished performance or rendering.
( Read more... )
Will most likely buy it on DVD at some point.
Overall rating? A