Into the Woods - Film review

'They're just a bunch of trees.' Wrong! Woods can tip us topsy-turvey, grannies become wolves, witches jump out at us stealing babies to imprison for life because they can't let go, giants quake the ground. There are love-rat princes, weird magic beans and worst of all we can lose the path. Lost in the woods!

Stephen Sondheim's clever musical travels well to the screen.Several fairy tales are meshed together in a singing, running, suspenseful and often scary way; more Grimm's Brothers than Mother Goose. Lots of verbal ambiguity edging from innocence to knowingness. Sharp, funny rhymes. And there's one nice guy, James Corden as the sweet if slightly slow and bumbling baker, trying to lift the witchs' curse of marital childlessness.

Not sure about the PG rating. A little long and sensitive little'uns could get freaked out in places. Everything comes pretty much right in the end and people undergo positive transformations but it all takes time and not everyone comes out of the woods alive.

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