Les Mis was probably one of my most anticipated movies in a long time (well that and every other movie that has come out in the last 2 weeks). I mean come on, this trailer is pure gold:
This trailer gave me chills for months. Coupled with all the hype about the live singing and I was sold.
However, the real thing did not live up to all the hype. Let me be clear - I realize that this is a highly regarded music and my criticism does not transfer over because I have seen the musical on stage in London, England and loved it. The story did not transfer over to film. I am the first to admit that I generally don't like overly lengthy movies. I think the perfect run time is about 105 minutes. An hour and 45 minutes is PERFECT. Obviously there are exceptions to the rule and some movies do a great job of capturing an audience for longer (i.e. another recent release Django Unchained). I think that most movies these days fail to edit well enough to simultaneously do justice to the story AND keep an audience engaged. Is this because I am a product of the MTV generation and respond to rapidly moving images? Maybe, but that's just a part of life we need to accept and move on.
Let's talk about the performances. I thought that Anne Hathaway was beyond brilliant. She was delicate and vulnerable and pure perfection. The same cannot be said for the rest of the cast. I thought Eddie Redmayne was totally miscast as Marius and the rest simply underwhelmed. There was a lot of talk about how all of the actors sang live during the scenes. This is quite an achievement on its own but, for the most part, the singing wasn't very good so does this still make it such a great achievement? I'll let you be the judge.
