Les Miserables

I found the camerawork truly distracting when it was during singing close-ups, mainly because the actors drift in and out of focus (Hugh Jackman, I'm looking at you!). Most of that criticism has to be laid on the doorsteps of Tom Hooper. Russell Crowe is more miss than hit for his singing as Javert, his singing just stood out in a bad way for this production. Hugh Jackman's singing voice didn't really grow on me for his turn as Jean Valjean. Anne Hathaway had some really good, powerful moments in her limited screen time as Fantine. Kind of disliked how Fantine's daughter Cosette was basically used as a plot device, not as a human character throughout the story. The "love triangle" between Cosette, Marius and Eponine was just odd. Eddie Redmayne (Marius) has a Kermit the Frog singing voice, it distracted me. Amanda Seyfried (young adult Cosette) had sort of a trilly singing voice, not overloaded with vibratto, but enough to be cognizant of it. Samantha Barks seemed to be out of place as Eponine because her voice was pretty solid. Helena Bonham Carter and Sacha Baron Cohen felt like characters in a different movie when their characters show up in the film, tonally they were in a very different place.

The script's pacing felt overly long, and I doubt I'll ever want to see this film version of "Les Miserables" ever again. Without Hathaway's and Barks' performances, I'd call it "Les Unmemorables".

I give it 2 stars, or a grade of C.