I’m going to start this review by saying that if you weren’t a fan of Les Miserables as a child, then going to see the movie version is a fate worse than death, and I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy.
Because not only is Les Miserables long and somewhat incoherent, it’s also a fucking musical. Which means that rather than saying, for example, “I slept with a man who left me with a child, and look at me now, I’m a fucking prostitute,” it must be sung in long, winding passages that build and build and build until they crescendo in heart swells that leave you in raptures. Because without the heart swells, no one would go see musicals, because they are fucking boring.
Rather than writing a coherent review of Les Miserables, or an excoriation of the gender and social politics at play in the plotline, which would be equally as fucking boring, I’d like to relay my own personal history with the musical, and then do a little commentary on the singing and casting. Because why the fuck not.
I saw Les Miserables for the first time with my father. It was back in the fat days, when he got free tickets to see basically anything on Broadway from bond brokers, probably in exchange for his soul. My father absolutely fucking hated musicals, but he knew that his daughters loved them. He is a good father. He also needed to figure out something to do with us, because my mother was away for the weekend.
We met him in the financial district, where his office was at the time. Before the show, he took us to the candy store at the South Street seaport, which, in the early 1990s, was the ONLY place in the city—at least to my knowledge—that you could buy sweets by the pound. Being set free in the place that afternoon was one of the happiest moments in my childhood.
My adult self would have been horrified beyond words when I saw my 9-year-old self sit down with 2 pounds of candy in the theater, and start smacking away with abandon. My father, completely oblivious, was dead asleep and snoring three minutes into the overture.
I can’t imagine that I liked the entirety of Les Miz. All of the stuff about the student revolutions went completely over my head, as did the entire Jean Valjean plotline. What I cared about were the big solos by girls—”I Dreamed a Dream,” “There Is a Castle On a Cloud,” “On My Own.” I liked the love story parts, and I could relate to the plight of Cosette, whose story was a classic fairy tale. A poor young girl awakes one day to be saved by a moderately rich father, and eventually, an even richer husband. I aspired to that at 9. That seemed like a path I would be lucky to be offered.
During intermission, my father bought my sister and I the soundtrack on CD. That night, I brought it home, and spent hours in the attic, listening to the “greatest hits,” and skipping through the rest. I used the liner notes to sing along at the top of my lungs.
The cover, to this day, makes me so fucking nostalgic.
I saw Les Miz twice more on Broadway. But what really etched it in my memory were those sessions in my attic, singing either by myself, or in competition with friends. For a certain demographic of girls, at a certain period of time, Les Miz was the ultimate ultimate musical. If you could sing “On My Own” without your voice cracking, or going flat, you gained the reputation of having an “amazing” voice. I was considered to be a “singer” in my younger years—I solo’ed in choir; I belted in church so loudly that people turned around and gave me the stink eye; in high school and college, I was in all-female acapella groups. Learning how to sing Les Miz was a big point of pride for me.
At some point, my father realized he could use my carefully practiced skills to his own advantage, and began paying me $20 to sing “There Is a Castle on a Cloud” in front of groups of people at parties. He thought it was wonderful; everyone else thought that it was embarrassing. To this day, whenever one of my cousins sees me, he starts singing the opening bars to the song in high falsetto.
(I myself am getting bored of this fucking story, sorry for writing it.)
I forgot about Les Miz for a very long while. Then I heard they were making a movie of it, starring Anne Hathaway, and knew that I would see it, even though I was sure it would be terrible. So one night over Christmas break, my sister—whom I don’t remember ever paying attention to the musical, given that she wasn’t a “singer” but an “unwitting listener”—came out to Brooklyn, and we went to the theater together. We each cried at least five times.
Which is not to say that the movie was good. Without the nostalgia and heart swelling, it would have been mostly terrible. Hugh Jackman, while an endearingly sinewy Jean Valjean, sounded like Kermit Frog with a cold when he sang “Whom Am I.” (TWO-FOUR-SIX-OH-ONE!!!!!) Anne Hathaway might genuinely deserve to die of tuberculosis, just like her character, Fantine. That’s really mean, and I’m not being serious, but am I wrong that even when Fantine died, it’s hard to feel too much sympathy for her because of it was hard to get past Anne Hathaway?
I also thought there were a lot of high points. Eponine, played by Samantha Banks, was terrific—except her rendition of “On My Own” deserved a little more oomph, am I wrong? WHY MAKE IT TAKE PLACE IN THE DEAFENING NOISE OF A RAIN SHOWER.
Everyone else seems to have hated Russell Crowe, who played Javert, but I thought his voice was actually full-bodied and warm, completely beautiful. The only time I didn’t like him was when his body cracked after he threw himself from the bridge (Disgusting!)
Amanda Seyfried sounded like a warbling little tree monkey, but she is so beautiful, and she acted Cosette well.
And Sascha Baron Cohen and Helena Bonham Carter could not have been better cast as Master and Madame Thérdarnier, the innkeepers and swindlers.
And Eddie Redmayne. Oh Eddie. I want to have your babies. You clearly were also in choir—don’t lie to me, I hear your natural vibratto. When I leaned over and told my sister I thought you were really handsome, she said, “Ew, he looks just like our brother Michael.” Which is the truth. That’s probably also why I feel like I want to protect you. I thought you were superb as Marius, and also in the excellent Starz network series “Pillars of the Earth.”
After the movie, I spent some time listening to the original cast recording, and realized that while the voices in the movie were far from perfect, I actually enjoyed their raw quality far more than the perfectly trained voices of the stage actors. Apparently, the entire soundtrack in the movie was recorded live, and I appreciated each character giving their solos volume and nuance.
That’s basically all of my thoughts. THANKS FOR LISTENING. GOODBYE.
