This is tricky. I do not want to write a review of a Stephen Sondheim musical, partly because I do not feel qualified to review musical theater in greater depth than whether I liked it, and partly because I’ve been familiar with Into the Woods since my choir friends performed it in high school. So, suffice it to say that I like the musical a great deal, even if I can never, ever remember the last 20 or 30 minutes of it.

That said, how do you review a movie when the plot is off the table? Acting? It was all fine; I especially liked Chris Pine’s princely manpain, and Johnny Depp’s excellent cameo was well served by being only a cameo. Special effects? Well, all the staging and sets were pretty great, but the few times special effects were employed, they were…. not so much. I don’t feel like this is a thing that should be cared about, really, of a stage adaptation? Either way, though. Clearly nobody screwed up the singing, and yes, it was a very faithful adaptation.  So, if you like that kind of thing, this is a really good example of it! And if you do not, well… it’s a musical, so you will continue to not like that kind of thing, but it’s also a damn fine fairy tale mashup. If for some reason that matters.