Into the Woods (2014)

A Disney adaptation of a Sondheim musical was always going to arrive with its edges sanded, and Rob Marshall's 2014 film does not disappoint in that regard. The Baker and his wife traipse through the woods collecting a cow, a cape, a lock of hair, and a golden slipper, all to lift a witch's curse. Meryl Streep essays the witch with visible relish. The production is handsome, the singing competent, and the whole enterprise sits comfortably within the studio's fairy tale industrial complex. We have seen this forest before, and the trees are familiar.

On the matter of contemporary social consciousness, the film is a near-total abstention. The cast is uniformly white, the romance is uniformly heterosexual, and no character pauses to interrogate the structures that produced them. There is a modest thread of female agency: Cinderella walks away from a philandering prince, and the Baker's Wife drives much of the plot before her untimely death. Jack's mother and Little Red Riding Hood exist with some grit. This constitutes a gentle nod in the direction of self-determination, nothing more. The witch's preoccupation with youth and beauty is presented as vanity and curse, not as a critique of beauty standards. No environmental parable lurks in the beanstalk, no class analysis in Jack's theft from the giant. The wolves here are literal.

The final act does lean on moral instruction, with the surviving characters lecturing one another about blame, community, and the duty to raise children well. The witch delivers a closing sermon on how children will listen. It is earnest, it is sung, and it is about personal responsibility as transmitted through folk tradition. No modern political program is smuggled in. What remains is a well-mounted musical about consequences, and a studio that kept its investment safe.