• James Corden and Emily Blunt as the Baker and his wife in Into the Woods

Before I saw the new movie adaptation of Into the Woods I made the mistake of rewatching the American Playhouse take on the original Broadway production, which first aired on PBS in 1991. (The Chicago Public Library has a few copies in their collection, if you want to make the same mistake.) I consider that performance one of the best pieces of theater I’ve seen, live or otherwise, and by placing it at the front of my mind, I was basically setting myself up to be disappointed by any other interpretation of the musical. Knowing that the movie was a full-fledged Disney production helped to lower my expectations, though—Into the Woods calls into question the values underlying many classic fairy tales (like the worship of wealth and fame or faith in the supremacy of traditional, heterosexual unions), while “Disney entertainment” is virtually synonymous with reassuring, old-fashioned storytelling. The two would seem to cancel each other out.

  • Lilla Crawford and Johnny Depp as Little Red Riding Hood and the Wolf

Stephen Sondheim, who wrote the show’s songs, tends to avoid hummable tunes, and when he does write one it’s usually to illustrate a false promise or downright lie. It’s one of many ways he’s subverted the musical-comedy form, employing the showmanship we associate with musicals to confront bitter truths we typically go to musicals to forget. In the Broadway production, the Wolf is played by the same actor who plays Prince Charming, who’s revealed to be a total cad after he marries Cinderella. By having the same person play the two roles (which is much easier to get away with on stage than on film, since theater permits a greater suspension of disbelief), Sondheim and James Lapine, who wrote the book and directed the show on Broadway, draw similarities between the lecherous come-on of a sexual predator and the false promise of the storybook marriage. (Sondheim and Lapine were involved in the making of the film, but the Hollywood apparatus so overwhelms their personalities that I barely detected them.) “Cinderella and Rapunzel serve the occupation of ‘Princess’ adequately, until they behave as individuals [in act two],” notes literary scholar S.F. Stoddart in an essay titled “Happily . . . Ever . . . NEVER: The Antithetical Romance of Into the Woods.” “Then, the blissful state of marriage becomes another form of entrapment.”