One of our favorite things to do over the holiday break is to watch movies. We have a plan for all the movies we want to see and from the time the kids get out to before they go back, we find time to see them all. It’s a tradition.
One of the most anticipated movies we want to see this year is Disney’s Into the Woods starring Meryl Streep, Johnny Depp, Anna Kendrick, Chris Pine and more. My daughter & I saw the musical a few summers ago – granted it was a local summer theater production – but we loved it and we were thrilled to see that it was being made into a movie and with such an amazing cast.
Over 12 years ago, director Rob Marshall sat down with composer Stephen Sondheim to collaborate to bring Into the Woods, a Broadway hit, to the big screen. As they were working on it, Marshall overhead a speech President Obama made to the families of the victims of the 9/11 attacks. In this speech, he said, “You are not alone….no one is alone.” The phrase resonated the the song, “No One is Alone” was born.
“In many ways, I think ‘Into the Woods’ is a modern fairy tale for the 21st century post 9/11 generation.” Marshall is quoted as saying, “Sondheim and Lapine were way ahead of their time when they wrote it. The comforting knowledge that we are not alone in this unstable world gives us all that glimmer of hope.”
Into the Woods interweaves several fairy tale characters together in an imaginative story that reaches modern-day themes. A witch, played by Meryl Streep, tasks a childless baker (James Corden) and his wife (Emily Blunt) with procuring magical items from classic fairy tales to reverse the curse put on their family tree. They interact with several familiar fairy tales in their journey all played by amazing actors. There is so much more to this story, but I don’t want to give it all away!
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Into the Woods is rated PG and opens in theaters everywhere on December 25th!