Liam Neeson, Geoffrey Rush, Claire Danes, Hans Matheson, Uma Thurman
In grade twelve I had to read Victor Hugo's novel (He wrote Hunchback too). I had to read it in french no less, and I wasn't impressed. However at the same time I had to read it, the masses were celebrating some anniversary of the musical, and I watched it. Only to know the entire plot of the play, and get A's on all the stuff we had to do in class. But because I watched it, I fell in love with it, and subsequently read the book (yes, in french). I have also seen the musical on stage in London, and loved that as well.
So when I go to the theatre to see it, which is the next obvious step, I am horrified to find out they did a hatchet job on it. To me, Les Mis was about freedom. one man's fight for freedom from the law, and another man's freedom from obsession, and the general public's freedom from opression. However, in this movie they turned it into a Hollywood-horrid love-fest. Never anywhere that I can remember in the novel, were Jean Valjean and Fantine anymore than friends. Never did Valjean get so uppity about Cosette loving Marius, and never did she sneak out to meet him. It made me want to scream.
But let's talk performances. I love Liam Neeson. He is one of the best actors on the planet and will always be good no matter what. He gave an excellent, believable performance of Jean Valjean, which matches that of Colm Wilkinson in the Musical (both guys are irish too...). Geoffrey Rush did a wonderful job of Javert, the law-obsessed, Valjean-obsessed inspector. He was perfectly cunning and evil while still being a pathetic creature. Claire Danes played (or overplayed) Cosette, Valejean's 'daughter'. She cried and moaned and wailed and screamed, and I could not like her. I was very disappointed to see such a talented actress go to waste in a perfectly good role. New face Hans Matheson was Marius, and I think (no matter what Cathy says) that he did a pretty good job of it, giving the character that was written for him. The only one I didn't like was Uma Thurman (but that may just be on principle). She played Fantine.
Now, let's talk costume and setting. Both were gorgeous. I loved them. The only costumes that I thought were overdone and ugly were Cosette's puffy ensembles that made Danes look like the pilsbury doughboy. Otherwise, I enjoyed the eye-candy set before me and not even a dish of nachos with chernobyl cheese could best them.
But I have one more thing to say on the subject of casting. In this movie I noted many types of french people: british french, cockney french, irish french, american french and even scottish french, however, I noted no FRENCH french people with good roles. Maybe because it was filmed in Prague and the Czech Republic. I would like to tell the filmakers two things: 1)Les Mis isn't all about love, you idiots, stop making romance films when you shouldn't. and 2) For a movie about the plight of the french people in paris, what about casting a few, erm, french people?
My Advice: As a stand-alone movie it wasn't bad, but to someone who knows the story, stay home and save your money and go see the musical.