INTO THE WOODS (Rob Marshall, 2015)
For a film that is headlined by much star power, INTO THE WOODS is surprisingly dull, joyless, and overlong. The fact that the film adaptation is directed by the same person who wowed us 10 years ago with the Oscar-winning CHICAGO is hard to swallow. INTO THE WOODS is a mashup of characters from popular fairy tales, and finds Cinderella, Rapunzel, Little Red Riding Hood, and Jack (and the beanstalk) on a collision course as one childless couple (played by James Corden and Emily Blunt) journey into the titular woods to have a cursed reversed, which was cast years before by a vengeful witch (Meryl Streep). But while the material yielded tons of potential for conflict and a deconstruction of the characters, the film version suffered from an obvious detachment to its characters' plights. It is hard to retain any emotional attachment with any one character when the plot spirals here and there, only to fall flat in the end. Unlike previous mashup movie adapatations such as L...