Into the Woods Review

Into the Woods brings some of the most famous Grimm movies to life. You have a mash-up of The Little Red Riding Hood, Rapunzel, Jack and the Beanstalk, and Cinderella stories. They all combine together for a decent movie. You won’t know how it will end when each world collide with one another.

Check out down below for a spoiler review on Into the Woods. You’ve been warned.

The Good

• The “Into the Woods” song was performed quite well. The collaboration for this song made the beginning of the movie enjoyable. It brought your mind to think about the Broadway play. It was one of the best things with the movie.
• All of the stories followed their Grimm style storytelling. Many people are only familiar with the Disney stories of Rapunzel, Jack and the Beanstalk, Cinderella and Little Red Riding Hood but this movie covered their original beginnings. This was refreshing to see it keep true to their nature.
• The cast was filled with some great A-list talent. This movie had the opportunity to bring out some great performances. A lot of people would complain and say it had too many stars but a story like this needs a bit of a star push.

The Bad

The total run-time for the movie was 2 hours and 5 minutes but it felt like it took 3 hours to tell the story. It dragged during a few parts which worked against the movie. The overall problem was the translation between the Broadway play and the big screen. You could tell there were some parts of the movie that didn’t work too well when the final product was released.

The Prince’s main song shouldn’t have made it to the final product. It felt a little out of place and off tune slightly. The interaction between both princes was alright but the song just didn’t work. That could have been replaced with something from Cinderella.

When you bring in the Giant’s wife the movie takes another turn for the worse. They should have just ended the movie there instead of making her the force of evil. It just added to the sloppiness of the movie. It really didn’t help the overall movie.

The witch was the connecting piece between all of the stories which unfortunately made the movie weak. The reasoning behind her cursing the baker was ridiculous. All of the ingredients she had the baker collect were interesting but if she’s a witch then why couldn’t she just use her powers.

Into the Woods (2014) Cast and Details

Into the Woods (2014) is directed by Rob Marshall and stars Meryl Streep, Emily Blunt, James Corden, Anna Kendrick and Chris Pine. It runs 125 minutes and is rated PG. You can look up the full cast and crew on IMDb. You might also like my The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies review.