Les Miserables Review

Les Miserables assembled a great cast that delivered, however it failed in the third act which hurt the movie as a whole.

Things I liked:

The movie follows Hugh Jackman and Russel Crowe primarily throughout the movie with a cat and mouse game, however because of the amazing character development and plot movements early on this is disguised and you genuinely feel for Hugh Jackman and sympathize with the character. Hugh Jackman is outstanding in it, and does a great job of delivering his lines through song while using great facial expressions. Likewise, Russell Crowe is a great villian who develops throughout the movie.

The movie starts off with Hugh Jackman as a prisoner who is released on parole and then skips town after a turn of events. His character(as stated above) is outstanding, and he meets up with Anne Hathaway whose struggles are documented throughout the movie to the point which some were reduced to tears. Hathaway also does a fantastic job in the movie, as there is nothing but raw emotion in her character and she does great to further the plot along.

The story was also convincing, while there are some complaints about it the overall journey and triumph of each and every character was really well done and justified. The movie does have slight pacing issues and does repeat the story a little bit, however the pros do outweigh the cons. I cannot go into detail without spoiling something, however you truly do care about the characters and the resolution at the end.

Even the supporting characters of Borat and Helen Bonham Carter are entertaining and serve a purpose throughout the movie. Along with the kid at the end, and the priest at the beginning  these supporting characters throughout only help add to the movie.

And of course I loved the music used throughout the movie. The delivery was great by the actors/actresses and the continuous uses of certain aspects throughout was very well done.

What I did not like:

There are certain things you can do with a movie that you cannot do with a play. A play is limited to a stage, a movie is not. Therefore during a play when a character is on the other side of the stage and singing about the two characters you just assume that they cannot hear her and go with it. In a movie, you could put that character elsewhere and just shoot back to them. It is a minor complaint but there were many times a person woudl be singing right by a group of people who would not hear her.

Also, singing every. single. line. throughout the entire movie was just too much, the music was not nearly as good as the big songs and detracted away from the power of some of the scenes.

The entire french uprising sequence was just terrible, throughout the entire movie you have great characters developed throughout and then you do not care about the french revolution at all. It also starts off with ANOTHER gap in years with Crowe finding Jackman. Its like really? We JUST saw that done. None of the characters aside from the kid are developed, and the love story is worse than a comic book love story. No spoilers here, but it is "I saw her, I love her time to risk everything for her." I am sorry but if you are nominated for an oscar you should not have that in a movie, this isnt Dredd, this isnt Spider-man, this is Les Miserables. Also, someone with a bullet wound is being dragged through the sewers and is covered with feces, but is FINE! That makes no sense. 

My Girlfriends take: Ranked from Love it, eh, Bad she gave it a Loved it.

Overall Les Miserables does a great job of setting up its scenes and delivering a believable plot with good character development. However it ultimately has one glaring hole in it which does harm it. I give this movie a 8/10.