01-03-2013, 06:07 PM
I love the original show. I've seen it twice in London and once in San Francisco. It's dark, haunting and brimming with redemption.
I was hoping the movie would take advantage of the setting (19th century France) and give us huge sets for the cast to move around and interact with. Unfortunately the director has an obsession with flaring nostrils and decided to film 98% of the movie version as close-ups.
Every song was pretty much an extreme, unedited (SEE -WE'RE DOING THIS LIVE!) close-up of the performer. Every nostril hair, every saliva bubble magnified 10 feet high so you can see how INTENSE they are being!
If this was an iMAX/3D release it would resemble a dental exam.
I wasn't expecting a carbon copy of the London or Broadway cast, but I got tired of the pregnant pauses and spoken lyrics pretty early on.
That being said, I still enjoyed the 'ambiance' of the subject material. The fantastic acting helped compensate for the occasional missed note and I still teared up at the Fontine death scene and the reunion finale. The barricade scenes were a bit Hollywood-ized, changing the message of random death to 'Selfless Acts of Bravery'. Sasha Baron Cohen was pitch-perfect but the comedic element was toned down and the shitheel element was dialed up which made the character less effective as a stress-reliever for the dramatic bits.
All in all a good effort and worth seeing, but it could have been so much better without the in-your-face cinematography.
I was hoping the movie would take advantage of the setting (19th century France) and give us huge sets for the cast to move around and interact with. Unfortunately the director has an obsession with flaring nostrils and decided to film 98% of the movie version as close-ups.
Every song was pretty much an extreme, unedited (SEE -WE'RE DOING THIS LIVE!) close-up of the performer. Every nostril hair, every saliva bubble magnified 10 feet high so you can see how INTENSE they are being!
If this was an iMAX/3D release it would resemble a dental exam.
I wasn't expecting a carbon copy of the London or Broadway cast, but I got tired of the pregnant pauses and spoken lyrics pretty early on.
That being said, I still enjoyed the 'ambiance' of the subject material. The fantastic acting helped compensate for the occasional missed note and I still teared up at the Fontine death scene and the reunion finale. The barricade scenes were a bit Hollywood-ized, changing the message of random death to 'Selfless Acts of Bravery'. Sasha Baron Cohen was pitch-perfect but the comedic element was toned down and the shitheel element was dialed up which made the character less effective as a stress-reliever for the dramatic bits.
All in all a good effort and worth seeing, but it could have been so much better without the in-your-face cinematography.
![[Image: magpie13.gif]](http://imagegen.last.fm/LastfmLiveJournal/recenttracks/magpie13.gif)