Quartile rating: 6.5/10 · 1 rating
In a woods filled with magic and fairy tale characters, a baker and his wife set out to end the curse put on them by their neighbor, a spiteful witch.
Into the Woods translates Sondheim's beloved stage musical to the screen with reasonable fidelity and some genuine charm, but Rob Marshall's film adaptation smooths over the musical's darker edges. The ensemble cast is game if uneven — Meryl Streep commits fully as the Witch and earns her moments, while others (notably James Corden) feel miscast. The cinematography is competent but overly polished and studio-bound, lacking the visual daring the material invites. The film's novelty lies primarily in its source material — the meta-fairy-tale deconstruction was Sondheim and Lapine's innovation, and the film inherits rather than builds on it. The second act, where consequences arrive and the tone darkens, is where the film most struggles: the condensed runtime and softened edges undercut the emotional and thematic payoff that makes the stage show resonate. A respectable but somewhat sanitized adaptation.