Apparently my Christmas break has jump started my thinking process which has obviously been dormant for awhile.
I had been looking forward to Les Miz for months. I've seen the touring stage play 2 times and really loved and when the trailers started, I found myself looking forward to Christmas so I could see a movie. Yep, not much of a life. You got it. Anyhoo, we finally went the day after Christmas. Hugh Jackman, a very talented man, stars as Jean Valjean. Russell Crowe as Javert, Anne Hatheway as Fantine and a bunch of other people whose work I am not familiar with. I expected to be blown away. Anne Hatheway is rumored to be on the Academy Award track for her performance. I was not overwhelmed. AH is ok but is onscreen for maybe 20 minutes and sings 2 songs. Hardly what I'd vote for if I had an Academy vote. She was good but
her 20 minutes was not Schindler's List. And poor Russell Crowe was clearly the weakest voice in the entire cast and sadly miscast. There are a couple of scenes where strong Valjean and Javert need to play off each other vocally and RC cannot keep up. Worse, and I think this is why I'm lukewarm about the show, worse is that HJ has to scale it back so he does not blow away RC. The truth is that I was actually more disappointed with HJ's performance than RC's. HJ is the musical star and I'm not sure that was shown here.
The rest of the cast, the younger actors that played Eponine, Marius and grown up Cosette were fantastic. Great voices. Samantha Barks plays Eponine on Broadway from what I read and it showed. She was the standout and is a tiny little thing!! I read she was cast over Taylor Swift. Uh, thank you casting God. Can you imagine TS screeching out 'On My Own' ? Oy.
If have not seen the play where Javert is as strong a voice as Valjean you might enjoy without question.
No comments:
Post a Comment