Cosette! You didn't tell me her name was Cosette!

Les Miserables is a really unfortunate movie and I've been trying to come to grips about why that is. They didn't make it a musical, which I think is a good choice, it allows them to add more drama and really take advantage of the film medium (plus, I'm not really a big fan of film musicals.) But I think that was their biggest problem too. The characters and plot movements in Les Mis are pretty one dimensional, which works for them in the musical world, but they don't have enough depth for film to really dig in.

And now the filmmakers are stuck. They want to make a dramatic film production of this beloved story (that is a phenomenally successful musical) but how do they do that? If they don't change the characters and plot the whole thing will seem flat. But if they do they're playing with fire changing such a beloved story.

In the end they went with the leave it the same approach and the movie does in fact feel flat. Since the characters are so one dimensional we can never really dig in. They all feel too extreme. Jean Valjean seems to holy to be real, Javert seems too evil and short sighted to be real, and when the protagonist and antagonist don't seem real it's hard to get the audience involved.

I think my high level comment about the whole thing is this. The movie just doesn't have a soul. That doesn't mean it's terrible, it's well made and well acted, it just means it's flat. Which is a shame for such a powerful story (at least it is on the stage...)

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