First off: I love Les Miserables. I love the book most of all. I adore the musical. I adore the first half of the book and musical far more than the second half. The first half contained my most favourite characters: Jean Valjean, Inspector Javert, and Fantine. The second half contained Marius. Marius is a good character, but Valjean, Javert and Fantine are way more interesting.
The movie was a mixed bag for me. It's divided everyone's opinions. There are newspapers and cinemas online giving the movie anything from two and a half stars to five stars out of five. And that's OK! We all have different tastes. :) The movie is a musical. Most of the lines are sung, but there's quite a few spoken lines too.
SPOILERS!
I loved the bit where the Bishop Myriel tells the police officers that he gave Jean Valjean the silver, and advises Valjean to become an honest man. That part will always be one of my most favourite parts. :) The man who plays the Bishop in the movie (Colm Wilkinson) also acted/sung as Jean Valjean in the musical!
I enjoyed the movie's second half far more than the first half, as the first half had some mediocre to bad singing and acting from Russell Crowe. Normally, I like Russell Crowe. I don't expect Russell Crowe to sing well - he's an actor, after all. But I do expect him to act brilliantly. His facial expression was mostly flat, which was a disappointment.
( Read more... )I was watching youtube videos on the making of Les Miserables (the movie). They mentioned that the actors had to *sing* for every take. They sang so much that Sacha Baron Cohen (who plays Monsieur Thenardier and is famous for his alter ego Borat) lost his voice and couldn't speak for at least a week! The poor guy had to write whatever he wanted to tell people. Sacha Cohen also made up a line "crawling on all fours" for his song. He wasn't intimidated by acting with other stars or in a much loved movie, which I found impressive.
