Jean-Paul’s Rating: 3/5 Stars

Bottom Line: The songs are done right.  The story is more fleshed out than the play.  Sadly, the fleshing out makes for a boring second act.

“Into the Woods” is one of my favorite plays due to a certain redhead with an amazing singing voice who introduced me to it many generations ago.  I’ve seen the play a few times and was trepidatiously eager when I heard Disney was making a film of the play.  Because Disney.  It’s a fairly adult themed play.  Would they tame down the Wolf?  Would they gloss over the adultery?  Would they dance around the death?  Would they do the magnificent musical score justice? The answers are no, somewhat, yes, and YES!

Act 1 was a marvel.  The casting was perfect except, maybe, for Johnny Depp as the Wolf.  Though it is easy to see Johnny Depp as a creepy pedophile, he doesn’t really do “Hello, Little Girl” justice.  It’s not bad, but neither is it fantastic.  It’s just there.  I also was a little put off by the kid they cast as Jack (Daniel Huttlestone) at first, but he grew on me.  Other than that, my goodness, did they do the first act right.  It contained all the magic and beauty that I wanted to see for the movie.  No one can top Bernadette Peters as the Witch, but my does Meryl Streep give her a run for her money.  Even the odd choices for cast members like Chris Pine as Prince Charming worked well.

Then, sadly, Act 2 happened and all of the magic disappeared.  Even the play suffers somewhat in the second act, but the movie, instead of using the time to make sense of a fairly convoluted plot, decides to go on a half hour long song drought where there’s lots of exposition on what’s going on before just throwing together all of the remaining songs together in a haphazard fashion.  The songs are still great, but even I saw my interest waning by the time they got around to them.  If they threw in an original number in that half hour gap, maybe making fun of the craziness of the entire situation, the second act would have been much more enjoyable.

They really should have just ended the film at the end of the first act.  It’s certainly a little “happily ever after”, which Stephen Sondheim doesn’t do, but it’s a complete movie and was thoroughly enjoyable up to that point.  What you end up with is another movie with a fantastic soundtrack that is well worth getting.  I can see getting the DVD and fast forwarding through the bad parts to get to your favorite song, but it’s not worth sitting in the theater for.

So, yes we’ve had this moment.  Even though it was a bad one.  And Rob Marshall’s made atonement by making “Chicago” which is a rad one.

Jean-Paul’s Rating: 3/5 stars

Bottom Line: Very well acted.  A very fascinating story if you don’t know anything about Alan Turing’s life.  Somewhat clichéd.

I’m fairly positive that almost anyone who sees “The Imitation Game” will like it better than I did.  Alan Turing was an amazing person and almost single-handedly brought an end to the Second World War.  All this and he was treated like a pariah after the war just for being a homosexual.  My problem is partially that none of this was new to me.  It’s a great story for those who know nothing of the goings on at Bletchley Park.  For me, it fell a little flat.

I think the main problem with the movie is how it treats Alan Turing.  The flashbacks to his childhood at the academy are the most touching and humanizing scenes in the film and I have nothing but praise for how they depict the already wildly different young Turing being picked on and very delicately exploring his homosexuality.  The adult Turing, though portrayed brilliantly by Benedict Cumberbatch, just comes off as another clichéd mad genius who is incredibly difficult to work with.  This does lead to some very humorous moments like when he tries to appear more humane and gets his fellow cryptanalyst some apples and attempts to tell a joke.  But even then, I was laughing before he even started to tell the joke because I knew what was coming.

The movie also fails the Bechdel Test miserably by only having one female of any note, Joan Clarke played wonderfully by Keira Knightley.  This can be forgiven because, well, it was a man’s world back then and they were pretty true to the story.  What can’t be forgiven is the one main interaction she has with another woman, they talk about boys.  The scene was complete fluff and it’s only purpose seemed to be so they could stick their thumb in the eye of the Bechdel Test.

These are all nits that can be picked only by someone who is familiar with the story.  Those that aren’t will likely be lost in the story too much to notice.  Personally, I would have been happier if they went more into the Ultra project and made a better show of exactly how they broke Enigma.  But that would probably be pretty boring for most.  They did have a few easter eggs for dorks like me.  For instance, in the background, you often saw them using Zygalski sheets which were actually used in attempts to decipher Enigma messages.  I’m sure there were others as well.

Despite my three star review, I would actually recommend this movie to most people.  It was a fascinating time of history that the world didn’t really discover until decades after it occurred due to the top secret nature of the project.

Jean-Paul’s Rating: 2/5 stars

Bottom Line: Yay, I never have to watch another Hobbit movie again!

This marks my first review of an entire trilogy.  First, there was “An Unexpected Journey” which was middling but left me with hope.  Then came “The Desolation of Smaug” which was almost completely filler with some added confusing “Lord of the Rings” back story thrown in.  Now, at long last, we are at the end of our grueling journey with “Battle of the Five Armies”.  Thank the Valar!

I’m just going to say it: I hate Legolas.  How much do I hate Legolas?  Let’s just say that I find Jar Jar Binks to be a better useless addition to a movie.  Every scene he’s in he’s all like “Look at me!  I am Legolas!  I am here solely as a familiar face for the rubes to recognize because our lazy director didn’t bother to create any memorable characters that are unique to this trilogy.”  What?  Don’t believe me?  Name me more that two of the dwarves.  See?  I only can because I read the book.  Legolas is lazy storytelling at its worst.  But that’s what you get when you try squeezing every penny out of a franchise that has already made billions.  I can’t wait for the fan released “Hobbit” remix with all of Legolas’ parts removed.  Never again do I want to see his false gravitas or his idiotic action sequences.

Besides the lazy storytelling, the movie is middling.  As with the first of the trilogy, there’s nothing really awe-inspiring or memorable, but it does an ok job of finishing off the story.  There is a lot of stuff that can be confusing if you don’t remember some of the events of the completely forgettable “The Desolation of Smaug”.  I couldn’t for the life of me remember why Gandalf was sitting captured in a cage or why he went there in the first place.  I’m sure it was some sort of foreshadowing to events in “The Lord of the Rings”, but it fell so flat, it was like a penny left on the railroad tracks.

As for the eponymous battle itself?  All style, no substance.  I know next to zero about battle tactics and I was able to point out a myriad of flaws in strategy.  Yes, artistic license should be allowed, but a battle should be somewhat grounded in reality as well.  The battle had no sense of scope and felt like it was planned by kindergardeners playing with toy soldiers.  For instance, why didn’t the orcs just burrow into the the mountain and allow them direct access to a completely unguarded dwarven kingdom rather than pouring out onto an open battlefield?  You’d never see the Fremen use such poor tactics when riding Shai-Hulud into battle.  Plus, how were the orcs able to control the burrowing worms to begin with?  Plus, why would the orcs attack a completely useless and undefended town instead of pouring their forces against the actual armies that they greatly outnumber and have the advantage of higher ground against.

What pissed me off the most is when Tharanduil gives his ever-watchful archers the order to shoot anything that stirs in the dwarven fortress only to have the very next scene show Bilbo very clumsily escaping the fortress by climbing down the front barricade and trotting up to the town.  I mean how lazy can you get as a dirctor?  All you had to do is swap the scenes and things would make some sense.  But nooooooo!

Ok, I’m done complaining.  If you ever find yourself in a mood to sit down and watch a trilogy and think to yourself, “Oh, I should watch ‘The Hobbit'”, please have someone slap you in the face and scream, “What are you thinking, man!?”.  Maybe that will make you come to your senses and allow you to watch a good trilogy like “The Lord of the Rings”.  Now let us never speak of “The Hobbit” trilogy again.