Review: Into the Woods

City Paper grade: B-

The moral of Stephen Sondheim’s 1987 Broadway fairy-tale mashup Into the Woods is that wishes-come-true don’t necessarily lead to happily-ever-afters. The long-in-gestation film adaptation ploddingly illustrates that point under the stage-bound direction of Rob Marshall, helming his third musical after the inexplicably awarded Chicago and the very explicably reviled Nine. Here he’s given more of a head start with Sondheim’s largely hack-proof score, which retains its darkly satirical bite, even if the director seems the one person wholly unaware of it. That tone is an uneasy fit for Disney, which has produced the film in an apparent attempt to absorb the musical into its princess monopoly. The show’s intertwining narratives pull together the stories of Cinderella, Red Riding Hood, Jack and the Beanstalk and Rapunzel at the behest of Meryl Streep’s irritable witch, with a wry self-consciousness that has been somewhat diluted in the intervening years by multiple Shreks and Disney’s own Enchanted. The studio doesn’t entirely dull the original’s sharper edges, particularly with Johnny Depp’s leering, predatory Big Bad Wolf, though Marshall’s pedestrian direction simply ambles aimlessly through the fog-machined forest, taking no notice of the carnality and darkness lurking in the shadows of Sondheim’s melodies. But his utter lack of directorial vision also means that he never gets in the way of the songs and several smart performances, particularly Chris Pine’s hammy Prince Charming. Marshall may miss the forest for the trees, but he doesn’t block our view of them either.