Review: Les Misérables

Every year I say that I'm going to see all of the Oscar nominees for Best Picture, but that's a lie. It's true that I've gone to movies simply because they were nominated, and I've seen several great ones that I never would have discovered on my own (Moneyball, Winter's Bone, Precious, In the Bedroom, to name a few). But just because a movie is up for awards doesn't mean I'll see something that I know I'll hate. I know me and I know what I can't sit through, no matter how good it might be. For instance, I'm sure Django Unchained is a very well made film, but I loathe blood and guts and gore and such, so chances are good I'll hate it. In fact, I've never liked a Quentin Tarantino movie, although I do tend to believe people when they tell me he's a genius. Same holds true for Zero Dark Thirty, directed by Kathryn Bigelow. It's probably terrific, but I'll never know. I've taken everybody's word that her film The Hurt Locker deserved Best Picture, but I know I can't handle it so I refuse to go there.

So what made me think I'd like Les Misérables? Well, I suppose it's because I love the theater, write plays, and am obsessed with musicals. I'm a Hugh Jackman fan, enjoy the French, and thought The King's Speech (from the same director) was wonderful. But here's the problem: I've never liked the musical. Les Misérables is depressing and bloated and melodramatic and confusing. True, it has one or two remarkably good songs, but they only serve to remind the audience that the rest of the music is bleak and repetitive. I'm the first to admit that I get tears in my eyes when hear but two bars of "Do You Hear the People Sing?" It's an epic song, one of the best ever written. And of course it comes at the end of the show, which sweeps all of the play's faults under the rug by manipulating the audience into believing the whole thing was equally as moving. It's not.

What I'm trying to say is that it's probably unfair for me to judge the film, given that I find the source material so appalling. So instead, here are a few bullet point reactions to things in the movie that were not clouded by my misgivings for plot.

- Hugh Jackman carries the entire film on his own. He is incredible in every way.

- Anne Hathaway is not as good as everyone says she is, and Russell Crowe is not as bad as everyone says he is.

- Anne Hathaway is very hammy. In search of an Oscar, she acts out every chapter from Uta Hagen's "Respect for Acting" and few from "Anxiety Attacks for Dummies."

- The first hour is far too hard to watch and required some levity. Helena Bonham Carter and Sasha Baron Cohen add some desperately needed humor, but they're entrance is somewhat jarring because up to that point there had been no comedy whatsoever.

- Amanda Seyfried is beautiful, but can't sing a note.

- Eddie Redmayne and Aaron Tveidt should have swapped roles.

- The little boy is very good.

- The director helps clarify confusing plot points by pointing the camera in all the right places, yet I still had no idea what the hell was going in the second hour.

- Who is Samantha Barks and did women really pluck their eyebrows so aggressively in 19th century France?

- Russell Crowe's suicide is nicely shot, although when did he find time to dry clean his uniform in the middle of a revolution?

- It's too long.

- The curtain call ending, with all the actors smiling on a big heap of furniture, is so over-the-top that I expected the actors to bow.

- I was disappointed when they didn't.