Do You Hear the Actors Sing?

Review: Les Miserables

There was a time when musicals were in style, when tone-deaf actors were dubbed, when stage actors became legitimate Hollywood stars. These days have faded; I'd argue the last great movie musical was Bob Fosse's Cabaret (1972). Les Miserables is respectable, neither subservient to every note of its source nor trying to reinvent a beloved property. But working with a smart adaptation and mostly game cast, director Tom Hooper kills some of the goodwill he dreamed.

For a romantic and bombastic poperetta like Les Mis (Miz?), the film alternates between sweep and intimacy. Hooper loads the opening sequence, following Jean Valjean (Hugh Jackman) as he leaves prison on parole, steals from a Samaritan, then atones for his sins, with disorientingly fast cuts and handheld camerawork. Later, he calms for Anne Hathaway's "I Dreamed a Dream," effectively repositioned after Fantine gives in to prostitution. In one unwavering shot, Hathaway effectively marries vocals and performance, starting fragile, ending angry. But Hooper's approach to this soliloquy -- an overbearing camera, mouth wide, tears tears tears -- is the same he uses for the other actors. The second female power ballad, "On My Own," is strangely truncated, and poor Samantha Barks as Eponine must sob through while the camera forces her down onto the rain-soaked pavement.