Film Review: To see the forest for the trees

Into The Woods is a delightful riot, a maddening mash-up of fairy tales, magic, farce and camp, with a healthy dose of Freudian mockery of macho princes. But the reason this film feels refreshing and subversive (it was adapted from the Broadway musical by Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine) is its wry, dark spirit — it continues to smile and wink while simultaneously picking the bones of the carcasses of those fluffy Disney tales, acknowledging the eerie undercurrents of the original Brothers Grimm stories.