Into the Woods

It's OK, dear ... I'm still getting an

Oscar nomination out of this.

Into the Woods

Grade: D

Director: Rob Marshall

Starring: Anna Kendrick, Emily Blunt, James Corden, Chris Pine, Meryl Streep, Johnny Depp, Mackenzie Mauzy,  Billy Magnussen, Lilla Crawford and Daniel Huttlestone

MPAA Rating: PG

Running Time: 2 hr. 4 min.

It’s not homage to the foreboding Grimms’ Fairy Tales creeping into Into the Woods that makes this musical mash-up an excruciating experience. While Little Red Riding Hood and Cinderella are regarded as classic children’s literature, it’s forgotten that the subject matter of these and other Brothers Grimm stories are quite dark and violent—in the original Snow White, the Queen, Snow White’s actual mother, wants her daughter killed so she can eat her liver and lungs.

Instead, it’s a schlocky plot that’s further jumbled by unsavory plot turns to both preserve and limit the onscreen body count. It’s the unremarkable Stephen Sondheim soundtrack that provides just one memorable song, “Agony,” a duet between preening princes. But mostly it’s just a rapey, murdery mess that’s neither pleasant nor poignant.

Director Rob Marshall (having long since blown his Chicago credit) ties together the stories of Rapunzel and Jack and the Beanstalk with Cinderella and Little Red Riding Hood. The narrative lynchpin is a Baker (James Corden, heir to “The Late Late Show” after Craig Ferguson departs) and his wife (Emily Blunt), who are cursed with infertility by the village Witch (Meryl Streep) unless they can deliver a quartet of objects to the Witch in three days’ time to break her spell. The four items are the slipper of Cinderella (Anna Kendrick), the cowl of Little Red Riding Hood (Lilla Crawford), the flaxen locks of Rapunzel (Mackenzie Mauzy) and a white cow belonging to Jack (Daniel Huttlestone, last seen playing the French boy who croons with a cockney accent in Les Misérables).

The fable meanders through its mundane paces, including a detour down the gullet of the Big Bad Wolf (Johnny Depp). Its off-beat interpretations of the classic fairy tales are convivial enough. But once Jack, having pilfered one too many items from the Giant, chops down the beanstalk and kills the colossus, it causes the Giant’s wife climbing down to exact vengeance on Jack and the kingdom.

It’s here where Into the Woods transforms from tedious to terrible. One character dies at the hands of another character for no discernable reason. Then there’s an out-of-left-field act of infidelity that triggers the equally sudden, misogynistic demise of only the female wrongdoer. Adding to the confusion and literary cowardice, all these deaths occur off-screen, while one character who dies in the stage musical is spared, since I guess two deaths are plenty.

However, the film’s true crime is its hamfisted attempt to blend the fantastic with real-life lessons about pain and responsibilities. The clash of tones ill-fitting narratives is jarring, and the already off-putting plot is made more confusing by some selective sanitizing. If you venture Into the Woods, you’re liable to become a supporter of deforestation.

Mirror Mirror

Björk White, I presume?

Grade: C +

Director: Tarsem Singh

Starring: Julia Roberts, Lily Collins, Armie Hammer and Nathan Lane

MPAA Rating: PG

Running Time: 1 hr. 46 min.

You might experience a sense of deja vu while watching Mirror, Mirror, just not the kind you’d expect. This comic-fantasy version of the Snow White story lifts from both the Brothers Grimm original and the Disney animated classic. However, director Tarsem Singh and screenwriter Melisa Wallack loop in echoes of Robin Hood, Alice in Wonderland, and, for a good measure, a Bollywood-style song and dance coda.

The sometimes cheeky, sometimes clunky result does little justice to the source material nor does it advance the legend. However, it makes good use of its talent (with one notable exception) and conjures a convivial concoction that, while not spellbinding, is escapist fun.

As the evil Queen, Julia Roberts is far from an old hag. Her character’s ugliness is strictly subdermal, a psychotic combination of jealousy and paranoia. When she isn’t taxing her kingdom into poverty so she can host lavish parties in the hopes of wooing the rich, handsome Prince Alcott (Armie Hammer, The Social Network), she’s keeping her stepdaughter, the radiant Snow White (Lily Collins), under lock and key.

When Snow White stands up for herself and becomes a rival for the Prince’s affections, the Queen’s treatment of her takes a turn towards the homicidal. The young, raven-haired beauty escapes into the woods and happens upon a hovel occupied by a septet of diminutive bandits, scallywags armed with accordion-shaped stilts to elevate them to more intimidating heights.

Together, they essentially become Snow White and her Band of Seven Merry Dwarfs, robbing from the royal to give to the peasants. And, in order to save eventually herself and the kingdom, Snow White must vanquish the Queen and her own breed of Jabberwock. What’s more, when the Queen desires to commune with her titular oracle, she literally steps through the looking-glass and onto an overwater bungalow in the middle of, I dunno, Bora Bora or somewhere.

While warbling the most inconsistent English accent this side of Madonna, Roberts manages to beam a blend of both beauty and wickedness. It also helps to have a comedic foil like Nathan Lane, who plays the Queen’s obsequious footman.

On the other hand, a little of Hammer’s aw-shucks shtick goes a long way. The weakest link here, however, is Snow White herself, written and played by Collins as a virtual cipher. While exquisitely lovely—donning a tiara, she conspicuously resembles Audrey Hepburn—Collins simply doesn’t have the heft to navigate the nuances of a Snow White who alternates between naïve, oppressed, benevolent, idealistic, feisty and amorous.

You’d expect more narrative and visual audacity from the director who once fever-dreamed The Cell and The Fall. Instead, the closest Singh comes to intrigue is a pair of giant wooden marionettes that drop from the sky to lay waste to Snow and her friends.

Otherwise, Mirror Mirror is a light-hearted—and lightheaded—romp that shares one main common denominator with its Disney-produced predecessor: the dwarves steal the show.

Neil Morris