Into The Woods

After a pretty ridiculous working week that saw me leaving the house early in the morning, spending hours on trains rumbling towards London and back, standing in front of rooms full of business people, sitting in audiences, and finally returning to the mayhem of the office, I said two words to the children as they ate their dinner; “Movie night?” Miss Eleven did a fist pump. Nobody else seemed to care either way. A few minutes later I had switched the TV on, and began searching for something to watch on the Amazon Fire TV (we have Netflix too, but they don’t have any of the newer movies). As the kids started making jokes about spending the next twenty minutes arguing over what movie to watch, I spotted that “Into the Woods” was available for rental. I remembered seeing the trailer a long time ago, and had a vague recollection that Meryl Streep was in it, but other than that - we all came to it blind. Oh. My. Word. Worst movie I have seen in quite some time. Actually, that’s a little unfair. The first two thirds were ok - but the last third saw the kids start fidgeting and yawning, and I began fiddling with my phone. It just seemed to completely run out of steam. Even worse, it didn’t seem to know which audience it was aiming for - with darker moments being hinted, but never followed up - which left it feeling very odd indeed. The fact that it was a musical caused an immediate eye roll from our eldest, who spent huge tracts of time playing with Vine on her phone instead of watching it - I can’t blame her really. The singing was interesting. I had no idea that Anna Kendrick was such a good singer (if indeed it was her voice) - she towered over everybody else throughout the movie. I’m guessing Chris Pine was dubbed while singing - if not, I’m wondering why his singing voice sounded like a completely different person. So yeah - glad I rented the movie instead of buying it. One more thing - why on earth was Johnny Depp playing a paedophile wolf in a Disney movie ? The references would have gone straight over the kids heads, but I found myself cringing repeatedly…