I love Les Miserables. I loved watching the (somewhat awful) 1998 version with Liam Neeson and Geoffrey Rush, I love listening to the original London cast soundtrack of the musical, I love Victor Hugo's book and I love this year's cinematic offering to the already massive pile of things this story has created. That said...
I can't understand how, in all the reviews I have read in which the reviewer complains of disappointment, NOBODY MENTIONS HUGH JACKMAN'S HORRIBLE SINGING. We all know Hugh 'Boy from Oz' Jackman can sing... (click link to see young and oddly attractive Jackman singing)... why does he give such a poor show in Les Mis? For myself, I think he must have heard Anne Hathaway's 'not the pretty version' speech and taken it sadly to heart. The singing live on set thing is probably to blame here: giving him too much control has ended badly, though no one else's performance seems to have similarly suffered. Jackman's singing as Valjean is actually unpleasant to listen to for about 90% of the film: he sounds as though he is making everything up as he goes! His acting holds nothing back, but his voice seems to hover awkwardly around the notes, never properly alighting. Breathy, using rhythm bizarrely and lacking proper bombast; every actor makes a song their own by placing accents differently in each song, but Jackman's odd delivery is outright painful to one familiar with the songs beforehand.
Otherwise
The performances of the child actors were breathtaking in their perfection, and the same word may be used of a certain Miss Hathaway, whose passionate portrayal of Fantine deserves ALL the Oscars. I can't fault her pure, lovely voice or her faithful, graceful acting. Eddie Redmayne's Marius brought life to the role and his heart-rending rendition of Empty Chairs at Empty Tables was a thing of beauty.
Perhaps it is expectation that makes or mars a movie experience - when I entered the cinema I fully expected to leave enamored of Jackman's Valjean and nonplussed by Russell Crowe's Javert, but I actually found myself more interested and empathetic towards the diligent inspector than ever. Crowe's singing showed a lack of training and technique, but his voice possessed a richness that Jackman's notably lacked. (His standing like a ten-year-old choir boy whilst singing was a tad distracting, though)
What can I say about Cosette? Nobody cares about Cosette. She is more of a plot device than a character, passed from Fantine to Thernadier to Valjean to Marius, without ever actually having any agency or doing anything whatsoever. And Amanda Seyfried did nothing to dignify the role, apart from having a soprano voice so high and full of vibrato that she sounded like Alvin and the Chipmunks being played at double speed.
That's pretty much all I have to say.
Except YAY AT THE BEAUTY OF AARON TVEIT.
I can't understand how, in all the reviews I have read in which the reviewer complains of disappointment, NOBODY MENTIONS HUGH JACKMAN'S HORRIBLE SINGING. We all know Hugh 'Boy from Oz' Jackman can sing... (click link to see young and oddly attractive Jackman singing)... why does he give such a poor show in Les Mis? For myself, I think he must have heard Anne Hathaway's 'not the pretty version' speech and taken it sadly to heart. The singing live on set thing is probably to blame here: giving him too much control has ended badly, though no one else's performance seems to have similarly suffered. Jackman's singing as Valjean is actually unpleasant to listen to for about 90% of the film: he sounds as though he is making everything up as he goes! His acting holds nothing back, but his voice seems to hover awkwardly around the notes, never properly alighting. Breathy, using rhythm bizarrely and lacking proper bombast; every actor makes a song their own by placing accents differently in each song, but Jackman's odd delivery is outright painful to one familiar with the songs beforehand.
Otherwise
The performances of the child actors were breathtaking in their perfection, and the same word may be used of a certain Miss Hathaway, whose passionate portrayal of Fantine deserves ALL the Oscars. I can't fault her pure, lovely voice or her faithful, graceful acting. Eddie Redmayne's Marius brought life to the role and his heart-rending rendition of Empty Chairs at Empty Tables was a thing of beauty.
Perhaps it is expectation that makes or mars a movie experience - when I entered the cinema I fully expected to leave enamored of Jackman's Valjean and nonplussed by Russell Crowe's Javert, but I actually found myself more interested and empathetic towards the diligent inspector than ever. Crowe's singing showed a lack of training and technique, but his voice possessed a richness that Jackman's notably lacked. (His standing like a ten-year-old choir boy whilst singing was a tad distracting, though)
What can I say about Cosette? Nobody cares about Cosette. She is more of a plot device than a character, passed from Fantine to Thernadier to Valjean to Marius, without ever actually having any agency or doing anything whatsoever. And Amanda Seyfried did nothing to dignify the role, apart from having a soprano voice so high and full of vibrato that she sounded like Alvin and the Chipmunks being played at double speed.
That's pretty much all I have to say.
Except YAY AT THE BEAUTY OF AARON TVEIT.
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