Today was the big day with the movie version of the musical “Les Misérables” hitting theaters … and, in my humble opinion, it’s a pretty miserable experience.
I place the blame firmly at the feet of the director, Tom Hooper. Material like “Les Misérables” doesn’t need hand held camerawork. It’s distracting. Also distracting is that for 80% of the movie the camera is shoved right in the actor’s faces (see above example). Whole songs are filmed like this with the camera rarely cutting away and constantly bobbing, weaving and swinging as the actors move and perform. The only time this technique really works is for “I Dreamed a Dream” … which isn’t quite as show stopping as I thought it was going to be (because all the reviews have already beat it into the ground about how show stopping it is). Canted angles also litter the film for some reason and I would be hard pressed to tell you why. It really serves no purpose. Hooper also films the big group numbers very badly with “Master of the House” being the most notable mess (along with “Lovely Ladies” and “ABC Café/Red and Black”). When our young lovers finally meet, he won’t even give us the satisfaction of showing them in the same frame, opting instead to cut back and forth between them in close up. Apparently, Hooper doesn’t believe in wide shots.
Acting-wise, the film is merely okay. Hugh Jackman works fine for part of Valjean but is occasionally shrill and sometimes off pitch. I couldn’t wait for him to stop singing “Bring Him Home.” Russell Crow is totally out of place as Javert. His acting is fine … but his singing is the real killer. I didn’t particularly care for Sasha Baron Cohen and Helena Bonham Cater as the Thénardiers. Maybe I would have like them better if they hadn’t been played for such obvious, in-your-face, stupid comic relief. I think the characters are actually supposed to be pretty vile, not pretty funny. Anne Hathaway comes off best of the bunch … but I suspect I was less impressed than I should have been with her because of built up expectations from pre-opening press.
I am sure my opinion will be in the minority. I suspect a lot of people of going to love it just for the mere fact that “Les Misérables” is finally on film … and that’s a shame. There’s a good movie in there somewhere and the right director could have made it shine. Instead we get treated to an “in your face” film experience which comes off as very overdone.
