Tom Hooper (The King’s Speech) sure knows how to set the bar a notch or two higher, just to challenge himself. He follows up his Academy Award winning film by diving headlong into an adaptation of a beloved musical and pushes his all-star cast (featuring Hugh Jackman, Russell Crowe and Anne Hathaway) to record their vocal performances live. With such a degree of difficulty, I, as a less than avid fan of movie musicals, found myself willing to spot Hooper and his production points for the effort, but despite a thrillingly emotional turn from Hathaway, I, sadly, was unmoved by the film. While dutifully opened up and full of dark swirling landscapes, precious little was done to make the themes or the characters relevant to the cinema. Now in theaters. (PG-13) Not screened for review
This article appears in Dec 26, 2012 – Jan 1, 2013.