And, since the stage version of Les Misérables is performed mostly on black-box stage with few big sets, you can feel Hooper reaching for the other extreme. He breaks away with massive setpieces. This involves shots of Jean Valjean (Hugh Jackman) helping tow a larger-than-life warship into an enormous dry dock, walking over expansive mountains, and mingling with poor masses so gritty their dirt seems almost to smear on the screen. Hooper says his goal was to hit audiences with a “shocking level of realism” that you wouldn’t find in a stage performance.
Going for “realism” is where Les Misérables is less successful. The authenticity Hooper strives for when capturing the live singing doesn’t carry through the rest of the production. Those huge sets are actually on a sound stage (a famous one, Pinewood Studios). They don’t necessarily look fake, but they do, despite Hooper’s best efforts, look stagey. In the end, the movie is still a musical, entirely sung through with little or no spoken dialogue scenes, filmed on a big theatrical set. The production hasn’t strayed all that far from its West End roots.Click through to read the rest of the review at PopMatters.