Well, this must be a first: a blogger who claims the title film critic gives Meryl Streep a line reading. Go figure... Then this blogger film critic asserts that No More is the song that pulls the various plot strands and characters together, when in actuality the song in the score that definitively does that is No One is Alone. (In actuality, No More is a song about the fraught relationships between parents and offspring that mirrors a similar song between Rapunzel and the Witch, Stay With Me. The same sub-theme is encapsulated at the end in Children Will Listen.) As for a romantic relationship between the Baker and his wife, they hold a place in the social order in which our contemporary notion of romance would have seemed irrelevant; theirs is a partnership, and romance happens to them when that partnership is solidified in the woods. I dont know how much more blatantly Emily Blunt could have played her attraction to the Prince and all he represents; her back-and-forth emotional tug of war in the song after her encounter with Chris Pine was delicious without being lubricious. And if Tracy Ullman and Christine Baranski were willing to play little more than ensemble roles as an extreme form of luxury casting, then we cant expect Lapine and Sondheim to provide them with material that would have further diffused the story and necessitated cutting. I agree that there was a decided lack of emotional impact at the end, but I would maintain that that is primarily due to the sententious nature of the original material and the need to tie up and tidy up two or three major lessons by the finale. My reaction to Mr. Coopers blog may simply be a matter of our seeing the film as filtered though very different sensibilities, but I cant help feeling that he walked into the theatre with his own set of I wish points and was unable to see the forest for the trees.
Posted on: Mon, 05 Jan 2015 07:53:06 +0000
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