Hit or miss?

Last night Couponman and I armed with discount tickets headed for our adventure to see Les Mis, our all time favorite musical.  The GAP went with us.  We’d heard mixed reviews, and I wasn’t sure I would like it.  I’d heard they went for star power rather than Broadway talent and wasn’t sure how that would fair with the powerful voices needed to convey the emotion of the songs.  “They sing everything,” the Staples Boy Chris informed me at work the night after he saw it.  “After about five minutes, the lady I was sitting next to in the movie theater leaned over to the person she was sitting next to and said, ‘It’s a musical?’”  We both laughed hard.

So I kind of knew what to expect.

So here’s my scorecard:

Opening — weak.  The noises drowned out the voices that should have been commanding.  The close-ups, when I was used to seeing average sized people from a screen audience, was a bit too much at the beginning.  I was leaning heavily towards Broadway.

Anne Hathaway, not my favorite actress, increased her standing with me.  The tears flowed.

Then came the barricade…  The young men were powerful, as good as Broadway.  Eponine was played by Samantha Barks, who starred in the Broadway production, and is my favorite character.  Now the close-ups were working in the film’s favor.  They brought intimacy and emotion that weren’t possible in the stage production.

“Didn’t they sing everything?” Staples Boy asked me the next morning.

“It was a little alarming,” I agreed, “when they sang on horseback.”  We both laughed.  “I’m falling off a building and I’m still singing,” I belted out.  We both laughed.  “That’s wasn’t possible on the stage.  They didn’t have that much room.”

A heart full of love…  I am glad I went.