(Rated 4/5 )
I’ve lost count of how many times I have seen the musical ‘Les Mis’ on stage, and how many people I have taken with me ;). It is my all time favourite musical. If requested I could probably sing it all by heart though you may not want to hear that ;) Unless, that is, I sing along with it in which case I am able to carry the tune pretty nicely if I say so myself :) My first experience of it was at its opening at the Barbican. That dates me… and it! It 25 years old in 2012!! I won’t tell you how old I was then :) Like all good things over-indulged in, I started to get a tiny bit bored and so left it for maybe at least 10 years. I even left seeing the film for some time til now. I wanted to really want to see it…
It’s good, very good actually, but not great. Given that it is a film I expected the production of it to be better. The staging of Les Mis was extremely impressive – in particular the barricade – but then maybe that would be the case because it’s not so easy to do on stage. The script, or should I say score, is changed a little from the stage version – a new song for Valjean and one of Gavroche’s about Little People taken out – also some very minor alterations – not really sure why but that doesn’t matter very much. What I wish is that they hadn’t chosen ‘stars’ to sing the leads – or okay more specifically Russell Crowe as Javert as he was okay but not good enough to carry the film in the huge rivalry main plot along with Hugh Jackman as Valjean, who did a much better job. However Anne Hathaway as Fantine was excellent – deservedly winning awards – as were Amanda Seyfried as Cosette and Samantha Banks as Eponine – gorgeous voices. Helena Bonham-Carter and Sacha Baron Cohen as Mme and Mr Thenardier were fun and stayed in tune-ish. But the most impressive and surprising for me by far was Eddie Redmayne as Marius. Stunning singing! Well done young man! But why not have that quality for Javert and Valjean together?! A big shame that something as permanent as a film is not given the best of the best of the right talent to make it hugely impressive.
Les Miserables – Review by TheRestrictedReviewer © 2014
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