Les Misérables (2012) Review

Do you here the people sing? Singing the song of angry men? Yes, It's getting them to shut up again that's the problem.

Me and Specialface go to see Les Misérables (2012)

Watch the Trailer here.

So I have a new person to introduce you to. She doesn't live in my house, shock horror, but she does live in the other house I seem to spend the majority of my time.

I'm not going to go too far into it here. So I have edited the Setting the Scene page with all of Specialface's info if you want to stalk her. This is about Les Misérables (2012) god dammit.

Moving swiftly on, even I'm not stupid enough to attempt to make Manface sit through three hours of people singing. I'm pretty sure I could have convinced (without even too much persuasion) Beardface or even Grinnyface to come, but for a musical you need someone who is truly on your level. You need someone who you spent the majority of 6th form with having 'musical days' where you sang each sentence just because you were that bored. I needed Specialface, like a fat girl needs cake.

I don't want to explain the intricacies of the plot as there are a few and it just ruins everything. Basically we're in 19th Century France. The poor are ready to revolt against the rich. The rich don't want that because they like their fat behinds on velvet cushions. Some of the rich are pretending to be poor because it's cool these days and some of the poor have even skipped parole to pretend to be rich. There's even a love story thrown in for good measure. (Where else would the soppy duet come from?) Oh and there's singing. Lots of singing. This isn't one of those musicals where people burst into song whenever they just can't contain their emotions. Oh no, this is one of those musicals where people sing about making a cup of tea and which teabag should they chose. There 'aint much talking.



So ladies and gentlemen do not take your equivalent of Manface to this. Find your own Specialface, I implore. Otherwise they will be grumpy and ruin it for you. There must be some kind of classified ads for this surely? Woman seeks woman/man to watch musical film as husband is grumpy old snoring git?

The majority of the audience was full of middleaged women who had dragged their Manface along. I have never experienced this before and it was quite nice. I do like experiencing a film with a group of people you wouldn't usually. Mostly the cinema, especially on Orange Wednesday, seems to be full of these 'yoots' I keep hearing about. By the end a lot of the women were borderline hysterical and all the way through we were surrounded by snoring men and angry whsipers of "George! You're snoring in the cinema! This is why we never go out!" It made me and Specialface chuckle anyway.

But back to Les Mis. It's epic. It's fantastic. I love it. I'm sure the film making in all of its aspects was great. However, this is a musical and generally I'm of the vain that when adapting stage musicals to film the film makers should just take a back seat and try not to f*** it up. (Obviously, minus a few characters such as Baz Luhrman or Bob Fosse.) Musicals should be about the cast, and this is a show completely stolen by its superb ensemble so I'm just going to get right onto them.

Hugh Jackman. I love him I love him, and not just on my own but to anyone who will listen.

First a tangent. I love X-Men. X-Men are my childhood geekery. I loved the cartoons as a kid and as an adult I loved the films. (Bar X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009) of course but that's certainly not Jackman's fault.) I love him as Wolverine. He is perfect. Everything I wanted from the growly git. However, my favourite Jackman film is probably a musical, the TV movie adaptation of Oklahoma (1999).

Don't get me wrong. I hate Oklahoma with a passion. I was in an AmDram version of it as a kid and the only way we could find any entertainment was spelling out Oklahomo in the titular song. Juvenile yes, but we were pre-teens and it's a really boring show. Oklahoma, O-K-L-A-H-O-M-O, Oklahoooooomo!

A tangent within a tangent? I'm so the next Tarantino.

Anyway the point is, even in a horrendously bland show, Jackman is amazing. He made me want to watch it. I didn't enjoy it, but I did enjoy him.

So yeah, Jackman was always going to deliver for me. I thought he was better as Curly in Oklahoma in terms of his musical performances, but I think that was more the fault of the camera in Les Mis. He was a wonderful Jean Valjean but as I mentioned one of the key things you need to remember when filming a musical adaptation (take note all you director folk out there) is that you need to keep your distance to an extent.

Musicals work on stage because they're all the way on stage. When filming a standard film, of course you get right up in your casts faces with extreme close ups to show their emotion. Standard. However, in the land of musicals that emotion is always going to be a little false as they're singing through it. Don't get right up in their face. You'll make them look cheesy, and if your actors are doing their job right then they will be a little cheesy most of the time, but you should be complimenting that not showing it up.

This moves me swiftly on to Anne Hathaway as Fantine. Oh my god she was amazing! (You know I'm impressed with performances when I list the actors before the character.) Hathaway is one of those actresses who either seems to get it intensely right or insanely wrong and I think that's a good thing. It shows she completely throws herself into her part even if she doesn't quite get it. It helped that everything about Fantine is so tragic but even with the camera uncomfortably thrown right down her throat she was phenomenal. I don't think I will forget her rendition of I Dreamed a Dream. It was undoubtedly very filmic and I don't think it would carry so well on stage with such distance from the audience, (though I don't doubt she would adapt and that her stage version would be fantastic) however it was probably my favourite ever performance of the song.

Just like in Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland (2010) she completely stole the show. In fact, her portrayal of the White Queen was the only thing I really enjoyed about what was otherwise a completely disappointing film. Burton and Alice in Wonderland were supposed to be the ultimate collision of madness and fantasy. However, the paring was all Disney and Alice in Wonderland, and we've all seen that before. It wasn't a bad film but for it's potential it was awful.

On to the lovers. I always find Cosette (Amanda Seyfried) and Marius (Eddie Redmayne) pretty bland to be honest. They are that typical Titanic (1997) style, patronising Jack and Rose love story. As if we cannot completely comprehend the tragedy of an event if there isn't a romance tied into it. (In case you can't tell I hate Titanic by the way. Probably one of my least favourite films ever.)

Seyfried was fine, and her voice lovely in one of those horribly haunting soprano parts. Though, she was completely designed to be looked at. She does have a gorgeous face and I am a fan (of her as an actress, not just her face), but it's just not a great part to showcase anything but the fact you can sing in a manor which is both uncomfortable to perform and listen to. Oh, and look pretty of course.

Redmayne had the same problem, not his but the part. Marius is boring, he's just another stereotypically fickle Romeo who falls in love with a face. I loved his casting though, mainly because he looks like the lovechild of Prince William and Prince Harry. If you're going to be the nauseatingly stereotypical damsel in distress whose only reason in life is to graduate from her father's care to her husband's, then it can at least be for a proper prince charming. I did feel Redmayne's singing voice was a little too theatrical at times for film but he was likeable and his performance of Empty Chairs at Empty Tables did give me goosebumps.

The three Princes.

Spoilers ahoy. Just a little one but I don't want to make anyone angry.

This leaves me with good old Javert (Russell Crowe). Crowe just couldn't quite pull off the singing. He was too soft and it made Javert into some big squishy bear I just wanted to hug. Based on his performance in The Phantom of the Opera (2004) I think Gerard Butler would have been a much better choice and the two are pretty much interchangeable in my book. (No disrespect meant to either as I like them both but just find their roles generally to be very similar.)

Crowe's acting was fine I guess, but I like Javert to be be completely sinister and terrifying like some kind of bogeyman. He should be the tale we use to scare children into behaving. He should be Christoph Waltz! (Someone please tell me he can sing?) This makes the collapse of his beliefs, complete disillusionment, and ultimate demise all the more tragic. I did still enjoy Crowe as Javert in a weird way, and it was novel to see the part performed like this. In fact I was probably much more sad at his passing because I wanted to give him a cuddle. Still, if I was putting together my perfect Les Misérables, he wouldn't be my Javert. I want to mourn for the monster, not for a man.

Spoilers over. Go about your business.

I don't even feel the need to talk about Helena Bonham Carter (one of my favourite actresses by the way) and Sacha Baron Cohen as the Thérnardier's. The roles might as well have been written for them. They were as perfect as you would expect: hilarious, grotesque, vile and wonderful creatures. The perfect performance oxymoron; Loveable and hateable in every way.

(I love all these individual character posters by the way, can you tell!?)

Ooops, just realised I forgot Eponine (Samantha Barks). I feel harsh saying it was because she was nothing special. I know she was shrouded in some pretty huge names and I'm definitely glad she won the part over Taylor Swift. However, she just didn't stand out for me. She didn't quite have the bite I like Eponine to have and her facial expressions were a little wooden. I think maybe she was just a bit too theatre, in that underwhelming sense as opposed to the overacted. It doesn't matter if your face is botoxed to high hell on stage as no one can see it that closely.

So hats off to the casting director, Nina Gold. Though I do have one quibble. It drives me mad when Americans fill a film set in any country which isn't natively English speaking with 'other' English speaking nationalities to promote some kind of faux sympathy to 'otherness'. It is a bit harsh for me to air this complaint in a Working Title film with both a celebrated British Director (Tom Hooper) and Casting Director. However it is also a Universal Studios and Relativity Media production, two US companies. Plus when it gets its showing almost 3 weeks earlier in the US than the UK (excluding the premier) you know who the film is made for.

Using a merry band of Britons and Australians does not suggest cultural diversity. Sort it out America. Oh, and for the next person looking to cast Kiera Knightly or Orlando Bloom in an English period drama, woodenly acted prissiness does not equate to Englishness.

That just about covers it. I genuinely really loved Les Misérables and though for once I didn't cry, (I am a ridiculously over emotional sort during films but the obvious ones never seem to get me) everyone else seemed to, including Specialface. There was one woman in the audience so hysterical it was fantastic!

Me and Specialface even had 2 for 1 Pizza Express with our Orange Wednesday which I have never done before as I had always assumed it must be a hideous, barefaced lie. A film, a starter, a pizza and a small glass of wine for £17? Bargain!

On the way back me and Specialface put a Les Misérables playlist on my phone and blasted it through my poor little car's speakers. Then we sang along maniacally while doing 80s power clenches. If that isn't the mark of a successful musical I don't know what is. Two thumbs way, way up.

Grinnyface - Cake thief

I know you are all probably worried about what happened to Manface while I was out. I know it does appear that we spend all of our time together, but don't you fret. I left him some treats in the way of some epic Black Forest Dark Chocolate Mousse Cupcakes, However, Grinnyface ate them all. Bad Grinnyface. So indeed, the cake was a lie...