Les Miserables (2012) - Painful in every sense!!

One of the biggest staples in musical theatre, Les Miserables has delighted and entertained peoples for years. So it's understandable that there was extensive interest, when Hollywood decided to cash in on it's popularity, by producing an ear-raping piece of torture. The result was 2012's film adaptation.

I feel bad for those who, like myself, were introduced to this musical through this film, as it really sours your view of it. The film is painful in every sense of the word, not just for the audience, but also for the actors. You would expect a musical starring the likes of Russell Crowe, Hugh Jackman and Anne Hathaway to sound amazing! But instead, the singing is just atrocious, and the answer is down to the incompetence of the production team. The idea of having the actors sing live is an excellent idea, when you're performing on a stage. But when you're adapting a musical into film, singing live not only makes the production harder to pull off, but also puts strain on the actors, many of whom may not know how to properly look after their voices. There is a better breakdown of these problems in the link below, but to cut it short, the cast had to repeatedly belt out these songs at full pelt up to 12 TIMES! And unless the actor has been trained as a professional vocalist, this can be extremely harmful to their voices later down the line. The only actor who can handle this is Samantha Barks, who had been portraying Eponine in the West End, before taking on the role for the film. Eddie Redmayne and Amanda Seyfried are runners up in the vocal department, sounding really good in some of the numbers.

*For a further explanation of the downsides to recording live, watch this video below!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ikqU6G6Xgs

The fact that songs were recorded live on set is also let down by the fact that the instrumental recordings were done AFTER the film was shot. This results in the soundtrack not being in sync with certain actions and not matching the vocals being sung to it. Again, the video above explains this further. It's a real shame that the film ended up this way, as it could've been incredible with the actors they had. Jackman, Crowe and Hathaway CAN sing, and CAN pull of the songs in Les Mis with top level performances, but the conditions they were put under for this film was a huge detriment to their talent. The film would've also benefited from live singing not being the chosen method. The best musicals have the actors record the songs professionally first, then they can mouth the words during filming, focusing more on their actual performance. Singing live on a film set puts the rest of your performance under huge strain.

Moving away from singing, I don't have much else to say, the film is ugly to look at. They tried to have some really nice looking sets, but the cinematography, colour grading and visual effects added to the shots just leaves the film looking drab, dull and unappealing to look at. It says a lot when a stage performance looks more dramatic and eye grabbing than a multi-million dollar film!

Ultimately, this is one musical everyone should avoid, it does not do the Les Mis story justice, and was the decisions made by the production team made this a disaster to sit through. A better example would be the 2019 staged concert, as the performances were done by vocalist who could pull off a live performance, and have it still sound good, without their voices being strained. I would say let's hope this director doesn't make another musical disaster, but since this man also directed 2019's Cats, that's really a redundant statement...

SCORES

Story: 1/5

Characters: 1/5

Production: 1/5

Acting: 0/5

Music: 1/5

Total: 1.6/10