I wouldn't call myself one of those "extreme" fans of the musical Les Miserables. I might be sitting here in my Les Miserables sweatshirt, and I may have thrown a going away party in high school when Les Mis went off Broadway. I may own three different soundtracks, have seen the performance done professionally over ten times, and performed in it as Young Eponine at my high school when I was a sophomore. I may already be grooming Lila to play Young Cosette...but extreme? I don't think so.
Ok, so I like it a little bit. I was super psyched when I heard that they were finally doing a movie, and Johnny and I traced the movie's progress over the last year. I wasn't really planning to write up a review of it, but after a lengthy email chain back and forth between two of my good high school friends, I decided that the internet world could use a good one sided discussion of the movie, sorted by character. So here we go!
Jean Valjean: I was very pleased when I heard that Hugh Jackman was going to play Jean Valjean. Though my brother thought this was an odd prequel to X-Men, I have heard recordings of Hugh's performances in various Broadway shows, so I was excited to see what he would do with the role. I loved everything that he did. I cried crocodile tears throughout "Valjean's Soliloquoy," and even though "Bring Him Home" was a bit too high, he acted his little Australian heart out. Great work, Hugh.
Javert: I always like a villain, but Russell Crowe just didn't do it for me. I don't know if it was the tightrope walking across buildings and bridges or the lack of vocal chops (ok it was the lack of vocal chops), but he was way down on my list of favorite Javerts. Johnny, on the other hand, thought he did great. He liked his rustic-y-ness.
Fantine: Hands down, the best Fantine ever. She was the perfect age, had the perfect look, and played the part with such feeling and truth. Interesting fact: I went to high school with her cousin, Mike Hathaway, and we all thought he was going to be Jean Valjean in our performance of Les Mis, but then he didn't try out for some reason that I can't remember, and John Kultgen got the part and was spectacular. Small world.
Young Cosette: So sweet, so precious, and no fake accent...or if it was, it sounded real.
Monsieur and Madame Thenardier: These were the ones I was most worried about going into the movie. Lately, I have felt that Helena Bonham Carter has just been crazy over the top (seen HP lately? yeah...crazy), and Sacha Baron Cohen doesn't really have a Les Mis-y background besides Sweeney Todd. But I thought they were fabulous! They were anything but over the top, and they were able to bring humor to the roles without doing the way overdone jokes that the stage Thenardiers resort to. (Ah I stole something and dropped it on the floor, so I'll look at the ceiling and make it look like it fell out of the sky. So funny...ehhh.)
Regular Cosette: No one cares about you, Old Cosette.
Marius: Sigh...he's so dreamy. I usually am not a huge Marius fan, but Eddie Redmayne played the part so honestly and sincerely, AND he didn't wear eyeliner. I hate when guys in movies wear eyeliner. No actual revolutionary students wore eyeliner. Oh, he was also not a Jonas Brother. Major props to him for that.
Eponine: Poor Eponine. She was my only real disappointment. Not only was she WAY too skinny (let's loosen that belt a little bit, my dear), but I didn't connect with her at all. She is usually my absolute favorite character, but I almost didn't even notice her in the movie. A few of her things were cut, but not extremely. I think they made everyone else bigger and left her alone. Poor, poor Eponine. Great singing, though.
Gavroche, Enjolras, and the Students: Spectacular, perfect, stunning, wonderful. I don't know what other words to use. They didn't need big name actors for those parts, so they were able to find people who had the vocal ability and the acting ability. I want to take Gavroche home with me, fix his teeth, and raise him as my own. He can put his elephant in the backyard.
The set was fabulous. The costumes were nice revamps of the originals. They brought in some aspects of the book that can't fit in the stage production (like Javert admitting to turning in Monsieur Madeleine, Gavroche's elephant, etc), which I thought made it even better than the original musical. One of my favorite things, though, was that the bishop at the beginning was played by Colm Wilkinson, the original Jean Valjean. Sigh, I love him.
If you haven't seen it, I don't think I ruined anything here...except that there are no Jonas Brothers in it...or Taylor Swift. Praise the Lord.
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