Les Misérables

This is often called the Glums by those that appear in this on the stage, it’s known by a whole load of other names by those who see it. It was a film that I came to with some trepidation I must admit. I have never been a fan of modern musicals, by which I mean ones written since the 1970s. So I was braced for not a great evening and well it may be damning with faint praise but it was better than I expected. It wasn’t a massive calamitous disaster, just not that great.

I did not expect the film to be 90% singing, had I been living in a cave? Anyway I found a lot of the singing, the music and the lyrics to be awful. I found myself waiting for the songs to end and for the story to progress, too much introspection. There were high points; I Dreamed A Dream and the songs about the barricades were stirring. Hugh Jackman did well carrying the film and Anne Hathaway did okay as well.

The production design was fantastic, all the sets inside and out of Paris and Montreuil had been lovingly built, as well as the ship being pulled in by the convicts at the beginning. I found that the story was quite saggy throughout and wasn’t helped by the continual differing version of the same song over and over again. Sacha Baron Cohen and Helena Bonham Carter annoyed me intensely; I never understood why he sang in a French accent when every one else sang in an English one, even Russell Crowe (ish).

I was expecting truly dreadful, it wasn’t as quite as bad as that.