Happy New Year to all.  May the best of the past be the worst of the one to come.

Well, I saw the film version of Les Miserables the other day.  I should probably preface the upcoming remarks by noting that I am a HUGE fan of the musical.  I've seen it live 3 times, own the original British album as well as the Complete Symphonic version (because that one has the complete show on 3 cds instead of the others, which have edited things to a certain extent).  I also own the 10th Anniversary concert (on both VHS and DVD) but not the 25th Anniversary version because I didn't think the singing was up to my expectations.  So, needless to say, I went into the move with both high hopes and strong reservations.  And, to some extent, both the hopes and reservations were fulfilled. 

Let's start with the singing, since that is the most important part of a musical (bad singers can ruin a great show, as the film of Sweeney Todd showed).  With one notable exception, I thought the singing in the movie was quite good and the best thing about the movie.  The exception, unfortunately, was Russell Crowe as Javert.  Where everyone else was bringing strength and passion to what they were singing, Crowe came across as listless and flat.  Javert is a role that needs to project strong self-confidence and drive with a touch of anger or malice.  None of those showed up in the movie. 

Next, the film is generally well shot, but I found the constant use of wide-angle close-ups on the singers to be distracting and annoying after a while. 

Finally, for some reason they felt a need to screw around with the script in really stupid ways.  Rearranging the song order didn't make sense.  Even when I could understand why they wanted to do so (like moving "I Dreamed a Dream" to after "Lovely Ladies" to have it reflect her fallen state) didn't work because it broke the flow of the scenes that surround it (on Broadway, Lovely Ladies flows smoothly and logically into Fantine's arrest, but in the movie it was broken).  Other changes, like having Eponine shot before she delivers Marius' letter to Valjean/Cosette didn't make ANY sense since it just meant they had to give the task to someone else.  Then, there were all the other small changes to the storyline that either caused problems (they show Fantine selling her teeth [not in the show, but in the book] but she has a full set when singing in the next scenes) or didn't fit (why spend 5 minutes showing Valjean and Cosette escaping into Paris?).  I also didn't appreciate the edits to some of the songs (especially in "Drink with Me" and "Turning") which removed some of the sense of futility in what was going on.  And, with all the changes, they didn't actually address the one part of the show that I've always felt needed to be made clearer.  The book explains that Marius has some negative feelings towards Valjean because of the latter's supposed execution of Javert.  This is why he is willing to let him leave and keep him away from Cosette.  Thenardier incidentally clears this up at the wedding (as well as the ring which shows Valjean saved Marius from the barracade), which then leads to the finale.  The musical doesn't include Marius tying Valjean to Javert, so he just seems like a shallow jerk for letting Valjean leave.  I wish they had tried to fix this gap in the script, but no such luck.

So, to sum up, the movie is worth seeing for the singing and some of my issues will be irrelevant for those who are not as familiar with the musical.  However, I feel no need to pick up the DVD when it come out.  I'll stick to the 10th Anniversary concert if I want to watch it.