Les Miserables (2012)

*spoilers ahoy*

A few days before I saw Les Miserables I watched an interview with the directors of the biggest films of the year. Tom Hooper is a very smug man. He acted like he was just brilliant and kept babbling on about how he understood film as well as he does now when he was 14 and was crying about how much of a genius he was and blah blah blah blah...

Anyway, my favourite critic, Mark Kermode (who I am listening to as I write this by the way) gave it an overally positive review so this made intrigued to see it, so despite my (wise) family not being so keen to, we saw it.

The first shot of Les Miserables is the best bit by far, a wonderful, complex, CGI, twisty, underwatery, beautiful shot of slaves hauling a ship from the water. The rest of the film never lives up to it.

My main problem with it was how much I really just didn't care.

I didn't care if the singy woman got her hair cut off, I didn't care about the love triangle, I didn't care if the annoying cockney/french kid gets shot, I didn't care whether the freckle kid ends up with the girl or not. I just didn't care about any of them and honestly would've enjoyed more the film if they all died, maybe I'd would've felt more emotionally engaged with them then.

I am fully aware that I am pretty cold hearted when it comes to sad films and find weird films sad and find things moving when others would feel the exact opposite, but still the fact remains I didn't care about any of them and how anybody could be brought to tears by this film is beyond me (my sister and mother both cried by the way).

Other faults listed below:

The Baron-Cohen/ Bonham-Carter stuff is way out of the tone of the film, stupid,unfunny and disgusting (seriously, does nobody notice how cheap and toilet-y the humor is?) Neither are very good either, bad casting choice fro both.

Cockney accents? Took me out of the film and baffled me.

Everybody went on about the cinematography...NO. Excluding the opening shot, it is all pretty standard. Whenever a song finished the camera panned up to see a birds eye view of the area, this happened every single time! The colours are nice though...

I didn't have problem with the entirely sung dialouge, but Russell Crowe! Pick a good singer over actor for a musical, Russell Crowe is neither might I add.

There's about 2 distinguishable songs, and after that they just replay little bits of them over and over and it all sounds the same.

Apart from all that, Anne Hathaway is incredible. My opinion on the film has gotten worse since I first saw it , in fact when it ended I thought it was alright but as I saw much better films and thought about it it just angered me more and more.

Tom Hooper, please move on from dull, academy award winning costume dramas. They really bore me, do what good directors do and move on, don't get stuck in one small genre, please.

If you're a sappy romantic, you'll enjoy it, but i despise it.

(The extra star is there since I liked it more at first)