Oh, Les Miserables. I wanted to love you. I was one of those girls who fell in love with you at a fairly young age, and it happened completely through my cassette tape of the original Broadway cast album. (I didn't see the show until at least three years of obsessive soundtrack listening.) Like so many other girls (not that I realized it at the time), I knew that Eponine was not just the role I was born to play but my sister in unrequited love. No one could understand her like me! When I finally saw the show, it was bliss. Oh, how I cried--beginning, middle, end. Les Mis rocked my world.
So fast forward kind of a lot of years, and here we are at the long-awaited theatrical release. I spent all month checking in with Vulture's Les Mis advent calendar. Of course I went on opening day. When I got my popcorn, I stuffed a huge handful of napkins in my bag, knowing I would need them to dry my floods of tears. I am a notorious movie crier. I cried at The Dark Knight Rises, for God's sake. I was psyched. I was ready.
The opening notes played, and no joke, I broke out in goosebumps. Did I mention that I was psyched? I just need you to know my frame of mind going into this. I am not a hater. I love Les Mis enthusiastically and unironically. But the movie...eh. It had its moments, and I do recommend that you see it if you are even the least bit interested. But I expected to have my socks knocked off, and sadly, my socks remained on my feet. Things started out well: all Anne Hathaway had to to was show up, and I was a wreck. All of the raves you've heard about her performance are not hyperbole; they are simple statements of fact. She was heartbreaking, and she can sing. She owned the movie, and right up through her death, I made good use of that stack of napkins. Everything involving Fantine was amazing.
I also have to give props to Russell Crowe. I think he benefited from low expectations: I thought he would be terrible, and he was actually okay. He isn't a strong enough singer to really pull off Javert, but he was miles beyond what I was afraid he would be. I love Javert, even though I don't really understand him. Take a Xanax or a vacation, not your own life.
Sasha Baron Cohen and Helena Bonham Carter were funny and gross as the Thenardiers, and Enjolras was cute, intense, and vocally talented, just as he should be.
However, there were some real problems with the movie, and I'm sad to say that one of them was Hugh Jackman. I've seen this, Hugh; I know you can sing. So what the hell happened? When he sang "Bring Him Home," which should be one of the emotional high points of the movie, he sounded like he had tuberculosis. I was cringing. And when he showed up in Cosette's room before "In My Life," he looked way too much like Andre the Giant. Something like that takes you out of a scene.
Speaking of that scene, Amanda Seyfried: you are beautiful. You're a good actor; I loved you on Big Love. But please, don't ever sing again. Her voice sounds like hummingbird wings, and if that sounds like a compliment, it shouldn't. That thin, rapid-fire vibrato...yeesh.
I didn't love Eddie Redmayne as Marius, either. Sometimes his voice was clear and lovely, and sometimes he sounded like Kermit the Frog. You never knew which sound was going to come out, and "Empty Chairs at Empty Tables" packs less of an emotional wallop when it kind of sounds like "It's Not Easy Being Green." And I know this is shallow, but his pale, freckled lips were off-putting. I have pale, freckled lips too, but I never leave the house without lipstick so as to spare others. I know this movie had makeup artists, so why did I have to look at that?
Eponine was okay, but why was she grinning like an idiot during "A Little Fall of Rain"? Even at the height of teenage melodrama, I never would have thought dying from a gunshot wound was worth it just to get close to a boy. I actually rolled my eyes when she took the bullet headed for Marius. The thirteen-year-old girl in me should have loved that, but it left me cold.
I should have been a sobbing mess at the end, and I was not. That, to me, is the failure of this movie. Valjean's death and the finale are usually a cathartic moment, but only the reappearance of Fantine resonated with me. I left the theater dry-eyed and feeling churlish. C'est la vie.
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