With close 20 adaptations for film and TV, and second life as Broadway's third longest running musical ever; Victor Hugo's iconic novel "Les Miserables" is one of the most reproduced stories of the last 150 years. Throw in a grab bag of big name actors, let them belt out "I Dreamed a Dream," and you've got a veritable surefire hit no matter the medium.
That's the game plan once again for the latest iteration of Hugo's timeless tale of broken dreams, unrequited love, passion, sacrifice, redemption and the impact of the French revolution on society.
Oscar-winning "King's Speech" director Tom Hooper assembled a ballot-ready ensemble cast with Hugh Jackman, Russell Crowe, Anne Hathaway, Amanda Seyfried, Eddie Redmayne, Samantha Barks, Sacha Baron Cohen, Helena Bonham Carter and Aaron Tveit. Claude-Michel Schonberg, Alain Boublil and Jean-Marc Natel all contributed the screenplay.
With the film set to premiere Christmas Day, "Les Miserable" is garnering mixed reviews from critics.
The film review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes currently has a 67 percent approval rating with an average score of 7.5/10, based on an aggregation of 21 reviews. On Metacritic, the film achieved an average score of 55 out of 100 based on 7 reviews, signifying "mixed or average reviews."
By and large critics seem impressed with the grandeur of the film's design and scope, and diverse ensemble cast.
However, many soured on Hooper's focus on bringing the feeling of Broadway to the big screen. Attempting to stack the odds even more in the film's favor, Hooper's version makes the "revolutionary" narrative choice of having each actor sing virtually every line live as they're filmed. Various reviews make note that while there are bright spots (Jackman, Hathaway) many of the actors' performances miss their mark.
Critics also thought the camera movements were too showy, and jarringly rote, using the same shots in every scene, for every actor, taking you out of enjoying the story rather than romantically whisking you away.
"The tasteless bombardment that is Les Misérables would, under most circumstances, send audiences screaming from the theater, but the film is going to be a monster hit and award winner, and not entirely unjustly. After 30 or so of its 157 minutes, you build up a tolerance for those it's-alive-alive-alive! close-ups and begin to admire the gumption-along with the novelty of being worked over by such a big, shameless Broadway musical without having to pay Broadway prices," said David Edlestein in New York Magazine.
He continued, giving Hathaway an Oscar nod: "Hathaway will win many awards for this performance, if for no other reason than the image of her giant mouth will imprint itself indelibly on millions of brains, some belonging to Oscar voters."
Variety agreed that many will leave the film expecting something just a little more, but that it should easily satisfy fans of the musical.
"As a faithful rendering of a justly beloved musical, "Les Miserables" will more than satisfy the show's legions of fans. Even so, director Tom Hooper and the producers have taken a number of artistic liberties with this lavish bigscreen interpretation: The squalor and upheaval of early 19th-century France are conveyed with a vividness that would have made Victor Hugo proud, heightened by the raw, hungry intensity of the actors' live oncamera vocals. Yet for all its expected highs, the adaptation has been managed with more gusto than grace; at the end of the day, this impassioned epic too often topples beneath the weight of its own grandiosity," said Justin Chang in Variety.
"Devotees of the stage show will nonetheless be largely contented to see it realized on such an enormous scale and inhabited by well-known actors who also happen to possess strong vocal chops," Chang added.
The Hollywood Reporter didn't find much redeeming value in Hooper's adaptation, and went for the jugular immediately in its review.
"A gallery of stellar performers wages a Sisyphean battle against musical diarrhea and a laboriously repetitive visual approach in the big-screen version of the stage sensation Les Miserables," said critic Todd McCarthy in his review.
"Director Tom Hooper has turned the theatrical extravaganza into something that is far less about the rigors of existence in early 19th century France than it is about actors emoting mightily and singing their guts out. As the enduring success of this property has shown, there are large, emotionally susceptible segments of the population ready to swallow this sort of thing, but that doesn't mean it's good," McCarthy lamented.
"Les Miserable" opens in theaters nationwide Dec. 25, 2012.
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