‘Into the Woods’

All fairy tales are laced heavily with insights into our own lives. They contain magic and supernatural elements, but their ideas are meant to encourage, illuminate, and to generate empathy — and sometimes fright.

Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s musical “Into The Woods” (first performed in 1986) is a beautifully composed, completely idiosyncratic work that fuses together the paths of many different storybook characters, all seeking to have their wishes granted. The trick of it is that Sondheim/Lapine grant them their wishes, and then force them to contend with the consequences of getting what you always wanted, or thought you did.

A baker and his wife (James Corden and Emily Blunt) wish to have a child. In order to do so, they must fulfill a task set forth by the witch (Meryl Streep), who lives next door, and therefore break the curse of a forever-barren family tree. Cinderella (Anna Kendrick) wishes to go to the royal festival to meet a prince (Chris Pine) and escape her cruel stepmother (Christine Baranski) and stepsisters (Lucy Punch and Tammy Blanchard). Another prince (Billy Magnussen) wishes to woo Rapunzel (Mackenzie Mauzy), and free her from her tower. Young Jack (Daniel Huttlestone) wishes he and his mother (Tracy Ullman) could live more financially sound, and no longer in squalor. Red Riding Hood (Lilla Crawford) meets a lecherous, hungry wolf (Johnny Depp) on her way to granny’s house and…

…well, you know the stories. What you may not know, if you’re not familiar with the Sondheim/Lapine production, is what exactly lies at the end of the road for these classic fairy tale characters, once the protective lens of “Happily Ever After” is removed and the authors take a more grounded, almost existential approach to the material. These characters, as seen through the peculiar filter of Sondheim/Lapine, and now director Rob Marshal (“Chicago,” “Nine”), wander more or less aimlessly, unsure if what they wish is what they want, or if what they want is what they wished for in the first place.

“Be careful what you wish for,” indeed. In this the first film adaptation of the stage production, Marshall successfully stages for the screen the not-so-subtle but strangely effective meta-musical, and captures most of its magic. Streep absolutely kills it as the witch, the big baddie of the play who also happens to be right most of the time. Also, since “Into the Woods” is all about shades of gray, we come to empathize with her as much as anyone else in the story.

Other stand outs are Pine and Magnussen as the haughty princes, Kendrick as Cinderella, and Blunt as the baker’ wife. Smart casting all around allows for the music to translate exquisitely to the screen, as the vessels are all up to the task. There are a number of brilliantly and powerfully staged sequences that somehow feel big and small, designed with great care but also minimal and charmingly simplistic. It’s not a great movie musical, but it skirts greatness at times.

There are some bumps and bruises, particularly in the way Marshall and Lapine smooth out the sharper edges of the stage show — this most likely due to “Into the Woods” being a “Disney” production. A few of the darker elements of the show are brightened creatively, but others are sidestepped and omitted altogether with mixed results.

Fortunately, the magic shines through and eclipses these issues enough so that “Into the Woods” still works far better than I had anticipated. Relationships between parents and children, and husbands and wives are explored fascinatingly through these familiar fairy tale characters, and Sondheim’s songs, precise and sincere never waste a note or a lyric. There is no filler here, as each word works to tell the story of the character singing. Complex interwoven melodies and musical motifs, all indicative of Sondheim, carry us swiftly through the film, and even in its graver third act, somehow we never become bogged down in any of it.

Getting the music right, in my mind, is already half the battle in a movie like this. After that, it all comes down to how you shape the film around it, and Marshall and his team do a good job of keeping this time-honored story alive and well.

★★★ (out of four)