There will probably be spoilers. Just to warn you.
First of all, if you don’t enjoy musicals, you won’t like it. Most of my family didn’t enjoy spending their money on this twisted fairytale high on that distinct theatre-style singing.
A couple of old guys behind us definitely didn’t enjoy the movie. I believe he even quoted Home Alone, saying, “out of the blue, she’s smooching with his brother,” after Prince Charming kisses the Baker’s wife.
A couple ones I didn’t understand: the witch. Why did she disappear?
And Rapunzel. Just what? Why did she exist at all? What did she do for the play besides provide hair that didn’t work in the potion and allow for the witch to be a mother and sing her signature song about children not behaving? And she just left and went with the prince.
I love ‘Agony.’ Chris Pine and ====== are hilariously gorgeous and talented. They are over-the-top dramatic and just as any Shakespeare tragedy (though this is not a tragedy by any means) has its comic relief, this was the one point in the movie that made it worth it for my dad. He laughed so hard. Chris Pine busts open his shirt, and his younger brother in response, pulls his shirt open even more. Watch it. Maybe just this song on YouTube when it comes out because it is hilarious.
What it’s really about
It was a very real-world representation of fairy tales. The young children, Little Red Riding Hood and Jack (of the bean-stalk-climbing, giant-killing variety), undergo their usual quests and sing songs about finding knowledge and knowing things. I believe Cinderella has an epiphany herself on the steps of the palace.
When watching Jack climb both the tree and the beanstalk, a certain poem comes to mind about a sexual awakening: A White Heron by Sarah Orne Jewett. In which a little girl is tempted to help a hunter find the white heron he so desires in return for money and his friendship. She climbs the tallest tree to see where the bird is and does, but realizes that she cannot give up the bird. The forest means more to her. The story is laced with sexuality only to prove one point: the awakening for the little girl and how the tree replaces her need for a man. In a similar way, Jack receives knowledge while climbing up and down the beanstalk. The key part is coming-of-age. Often, this is depicted in a sexual awakening or symbolic way.
Little Red Riding Hood is the first to have her coming-of-age and sings the song ‘I Know Things Now.’ She says that “(the wolf) showed me things/ Many beautiful things” and “he made me feel excited- well, excited and scared…” Perhaps most sexual of all: “he swallowed me down a dark slimy path”…and she knows things now, many valuable things. It fits the pattern of sexual awakening. Especially when we piece this together with Johnny Depp’s very seductive stalker-ish wolf who looks like a pimp, and how before she sings about it, I wouldn’t think she had learned that much. Just that the world is a dangerous place. This is her coming-of-age. She learns more than we would think, because she loses her innocent naive view of the world.
Jack, like Little Red, repeats that he explored things he’d never dare (without the beanstalk or without the Wolf). Also, the Giant Jack sings about is a woman that pulls him to her Giant breast and in turn, he learns things about the world. Both Jack and Little Red are scared, but change because of their experiences.
Cinderella has a coming-of-age too when she makes her first decision, which is not to decide, but leave her slipper for the Prince to catch her. There is also a song that ensues, but the important part is she made her first decision, and matures.
Rapunzel comes of age when she meets the first person other than her “mother” and makes out with the Prince. The Bakers rekindle their love in “It Takes Two” when he decides to let her stay and help, and she says she’s more attracted to him because he’s braver and better.
But then there’s the twist. No, not the twist where there’s another Giant that kills one loved one of basically everyone that’s left, or the Witch mysteriously going back into the ground…when Prince Charming kisses the Baker’s wife.
It totally threw me off, but I loved in a strange way. Prince Charming admits that he was raised to be charming, not sincere. In her song, ‘Moments in the Woods,’ the baker’s wife implies that the Woods does something strange to you.
So what do the woods represent? The world? As Meryl Streep sang about. The world that steals your children away and causes them not to obey, causes them to stray, etc. So the few left must leave behind what the fairy tales and their parents have taught them and become better. Slay their own Giants, and leave the Woods after their coming-of-age.
When the Witch sings ‘Last Midnight’ she emphasizes how the characters of the play each stole or lied to get their happy endings and how they shouldn’t be blaming her for their issues. She calls all of the characters (the ones present: Cinderella, the Baker and his child, Little Red, and Jack) liars and thieves.
The characters took their happy-ever-afters through lying, seducing, stealing or magic. They’re not perfect people. And they face the consequences for being selfish and pay dearly. Except Rapunzel who lives happily ever after. But everyone else undergoes their coming-of-age and changes from the experience. It does end on a happy note, with everyone but Prince Charming and Rapunzel and her husband recovering and deciding to move on together. The Baker stays to be the father to his child that his father never was, and he also takes in Little Red and Jack. Cinderella stays with them too.
Differences from the original
Comparing it with the original play there are a few differences but the main one for me is the unhappiness with their happily-ever-afters that exists in the original. The Bakers want more room and for the husband to hold the baby boy more often, Jack misses the kingdom in the sky, and Cinderella is getting bored in the palace. Without this, there’s less for us to blame the characters themselves for. It’s all fate doing this to them after they got their wishes, ruining their happy-ever-afters, even though their endings weren’t happy (or endings) at all.
Rapunzel goes mad and runs into the woods and the Princes are supposed to admit (in an Agony reprise) that they wish for two new maidens: Snow White and Sleeping Beauty. I do like the twist that this new version does and presents the affair with the Baker’s wife instead.
When the Giant shows up seeking Jack’s blood, the group decides to give her the narrator instead. This doesn’t make them the happy do-gooders we see them as in the movie. Also, Rapunzel is supposed to be crushed by the giant, truly leaving now happy ending.
But alas she lives in the movie version and it is assumed she rides off with the Prince and lives happily ever after. Cinderella tells Prince Charming to leave after learning of his infidelity and he leaves alone in the movie version. In the original, both princes have their new maidens and have happily ever afters in that way.
I’ve done a little more research though and some versions do have the affair between the Baker’s wife and Prince Charming, but it takes it farther than the movie version and they end up having sex. You can see why Disney would cut that.
Overall, seems to me like the ‘regular people’ like my family that like the good old fairy tales didn’t enjoy it because it was too dark and twisted and the ones who enjoy the original Broadway version also didn’t like it because it was too kid-friendly and Disney-fied. Seems like the directors tried too hard to balance between the mature content and making it kid-friendly and it fell through on both ends.
If anyone has any other comments or if I got anything wrong, please tell me!
