I can't stand it when a musical doesn't have proper song numbers, instead it's one long dull song with interruptions and plot splattered in between. I've no idea how can people tolerate this. Chicago is a fun musical, excellent numbers. Into The Woods is just terrible, like Les Miserables, it's just people singing monotonously to the same tune over and over again.
shareAgony, Hello Little Girl, Giants in the Sky, No One is Alone, Children Will Listen. All individual songs that don't sound anything like each other. Like most musicals, it does have recurring musical themes throughout but there are definitely separate and individual songs throughout the whole film.
shareOh please! The OP is absolutely right! Maybe if you are a Sondheim expert, you may discern different melodies. But to the average ear, all "songs" are much of a muchness with the same stilted melody. There are so many other, better musicals such as "Little Shop of Horrors" and "Grease" with catchy, memorable tunes. But this one is a stinker. Just like "Les Miserables" there is not one discernable melody. It's more like talking with a singing voice. C-R-A-P!
shareAnd yet Led Miserables and Into the Woods ran for much longer than either Grease and Little Shop of Horrors.
shareI have to agree. I love the premise of the movie and I like musicals but having not see the stage show, I was expecting something like wicked.
The constant singing instead of speaking did annoy me.
I had a music teacher tell me that most people's musical tastes are 100-200 years behind. I remember him telling us once music was recorded, people began to devalue music, it was just something they could turn on and off, it required no training to press a play button turn on a radio.
shareSeems Mr Sondheim is using a technique first employed by early Twentieth Century composers who used the Twelve-Tone system. It's called "spreshstimme," speaking on pitch. But Schoenberg and Berg were never THIS boring!
Endless repetition of the same few notes in the middle of the vocal range and mind-numbing endless repetitions of the same rhythmic patterns to different, but so very similar, smart-alecky lyrics result in something, to use an esoteric technical term, crappy. It's all too Noo Yawk for me!
Oh god. Your pretentiousness is more pretentious than people like me who defend Sondheim.
"last Midnight, Into the Woods, Agony, Children Will Listen, No One is Alone"
ALL have memorable hummable melodies with poignant lyricism.
I totally agree, OP. The songs are mostly just the same monotone overtures with a sweeping symphony and strained vocal operatics.
I'll defend Les Miserables, to a point at least, as I think it's substance and depth of storyline and lyrics, makes it a great classic.
But the fact is with this film/musical it doesn't even know what it's trying to be. One moment they are playing it up for comedy and almost being satirical, then they are playing up the drama and darkness.
A classic it is not.
Riddle wrapped inside an enigma, wrapped inside a taco.
Stick with Les Miz and its repetitive faux operatic pop music if you wish.
However, as far as Into the Woods in concerned, I'd say 30 years, five major revivals between NY and London (not to mention elsewhere), constantly performed in regional, educational, and amateur theatres, songs recorded by multiple major recording artists... I don't think you get to make the call on whether or not it's a classic. It's more than proven itself already.
It's a personal opinion.
In my opinion the depth of the storyline and characters in Les Mis (especially backstory, interactions between characters, motivations and relatability etc) are far superior overall and more fleshed out with greater substance, than what Into The Woods have tried and failed at here with their characters and storyline.
I also feel lyrically and musically it is superior, and more deserve of the 'classic' title, than this.
Again this is opinion that is my own. You really can't "prove" one way or another about an opinion, so you don't get to make that call either. ;)
One could point out facts that it has "only" had 5 revivals, while Les Mis has had dozens and dozens more, and is by far more well known in the 'mainstream' by most people regarding it's history and plot - Whereas I doubt you will find many people in the mainstream who really know what Into The Woods is at all, let alone it's musical production history and plot.
I will say, overall movie versions of musicals never work, especially the epic fail that was 'Hollywoods' latest attempt at Les Miserables. By all means onstage Into The Woods might be better, but I have yet to experience it.
Riddle wrapped inside an enigma, wrapped inside a taco.
As I'd mentioned, those are five revivals between NY and London alone not counting the vast number of regional and amateur productions it's gotten all around the world since the original closed. The stage show has been filmed professionally twice, and a documentary was made about a staging of a cut-down children's version performed by school-kids in Washington DC. I'm not debating the popularity of Les Miz, but you are not accepting the popularity of Into the Woods. A popularity that existed well before you deemed it "not a classic." Too late. It already is.
shareYep, godawful movie. Never heard of hte play. My taste in musicals run towards movies like Hedwig, Rocky Horror on the rock side to Singing in the Rain on the oldies side. But I have no patience for this kind of crap where no song is memorable and the acting is way too theaterish.
shareI would rather have dialogue tell the story than lyrics. It's like in opera where you have conversational songs bawled out tunelessly.
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