Why the Music in Les Misérables (2012) is Worse than you Thought

this video is brought to you by viewers like you thanks for helping support all my bad habits ok so check it out I'm just gonna be really really honest with you Les Miserables is like a super simple and straightforward musical it's really not that complicated at all in fact it's one of my go-to s for explaining how a theme or light motif works here's a really easy example listen to that song that the bishop sings to Valjean in the beginning of Act one okay now listen to the song that marius sings when he realizes that all his friends are dead it's the exact same music just different lyrics you don't have to like digging the musical code or get complicated or anything like that it's literally just the same music over and over again with different words and honestly it makes for a great contrasting parallel between like making somebody feel invited and realizing that you're alone and there are tons of moments like this in this musical some people go so far as to describe this musical as symmetrical because so many pieces of music that appear in the first act come back in a second and that's what I was seeing in the requests when people are asking me to talk about lame is and I figured oh cool it's gonna be a really fun and easy video to make also I figured like covering a musical about a revolution might be poignant right now because of how absolutely nothing is going on don't worry everything's fine there's nothing happening just stay indoors and watch the news but I also thought that doing a video online is could be nice because they just did that remake a couple years ago that I never checked out and oh my god what the hell did they do I can't believe they messed up blame his Rob that bad it's like finally killed someone forgot the lyrics to Barney like when I was watching the Lovecraftian fever dreams that were the live-action Disney remakes I thought that they were an anomaly not the new industry standard holy crap on a cracker I know that the Internet's like full of hot takes of people just tearing into things that are marginally bad I've absolutely been a part of that system it's okay to like Tarzan just leave me alone so I want to be really clear when I say this this isn't just me saying that I don't think that the performances are good or that I didn't like the choices that they made or anything like that the performances in this film are so bad that they legitimately devalue the music in lame is it isn't just a bad performance it's literally wrong they just aren't singing the right notes welcomes calm God our laws I'm so away here in common call I mean this when I say it I wanted this video to just be about the musical construction of lamia's but so many aspects of this film are just so inexcusably bad and it's actually derailed my entire life for the last few weeks this film completely misrepresents the music in the show and we all know how this is gonna start so let's just get down to it part 1 Russell Crowe oh yeah a big shock Wow Russell Crowe is bad someone give me a Pulitzer for journalism but there's a lot to his performance that people aren't talking about and I feel need to be said like for starters did you know that Russell Crowe is not only not a bad singer but also has his own band oh well I'm still doing fools in prison Crowes been singing since 1980 which is when this show originally premiered that's right Russell Crowe has been singing for as long as this shows been around and he's not bad [Music] so if he's so experienced then why does he suck a lemon in this movie well in order to explain that we have to go into vocal tech and vocal pedagogy what I mean by that is that when it comes to vocalists you're honestly dealing with a completely different breed of the musical world see ever since like oh I don't know the 1600s or so everyone in their mother who's ever had a solo at their local church has felt qualified enough to become some kind of vocal teacher so over hundreds and hundreds of years of people basically faking it until they make it all trying to be their generations Beyonce a lot of technical terms and labels in the vocalist catalog have ended up with dozens of different meanings and interpretations there are some vocal terms and techniques out there that have been so misused over so many years that they are almost completely meaningless so trying to honestly grow and develop in the vocal world is an absolute nightmare there's so much bad information out there that I don't even really know how to give you an example like okay here's one like so there's this thing in your throat called your larynx it's your voice box and if at any point your life you've had a large amount of testosterone in your system then your vocal folds and your lyrics have gotten thicker which has made your voice drop now in your lyrics there are two muscles that we're going to focus on the thyroarytenoid muscle and a cricothyroid muscle and we abbreviate those to the T a and C T muscles now when you're speaking in basically your normal speaking voice you're primarily utilizing your ta muscle but if you raise your voice a little bit then you're going to be using more of your C T muscle that's just how it works now when you're singing singers to characterize ta dominated singing as your chest voice because a lot of people describe it as being able to feel your voice vibrate in your chest and when you're using C T dominated singing vocalists call it your head voice because it feels like it's vibrating in your head now instead of chest and head voice some teachers call this your m1 register and your m2 register and that's fine some other people call your chest voice your modal voice because it's what people tend to use to speak and they'll call your head voice your falsetto register that's actually how Wikipedia categorizes them and that's wrong it's wrong because technically only men can sing in falsetto when women try to open their glottis or the gap in between their vocal folds they just end up in their head voice I'm gonna look some videos on the description to help you guys out from everything I've seen this dude in the New York vocal coaching YouTube channel is the best I've seen for accurate information he knows what's up the three registers for men are actually chest head and falsetto while for women its chest head and something you call your mixed voice and even then some people debate the whole mixed voice thing but then against other people throw this whole system out and I've heard some coaches that use diaphragm oral and nasal resonance registers which is completely wrong from everything that I've read in terms of what is and is not a register but that doesn't stop them from saying that and making a living teaching that to other people now if your eyes of glazed over then good because the thing about studying vocal anything is that you have to wade through this swamp of misinformation I'm literally looking at my vocal tech textbook and it's contradicting Wikipedia what are you supposed to do with that and we haven't even gotten to vocal fry' or whistle register whatever the hell flajolet is and none of this even begins to address different styles of singing like belting which is not a register and it's not just high chest voice I want to lay that to rest or death metal growls or throat singing there's a lot out there now I tell you all this because I want to offer some context to the colossal idiocy you're about to hear but a lot of different places through that period when I was in Vancouver oh no no I was in Illinois Sydney Los Angeles no gun ran around and so wherever I went my aim was to sing every day so I ended up hooking up with a whole bunch of different singing teachers and they all have their own shorthand and language that you have to learn crow clearly does not have any experience singing in a musical theater situation and going to four different vocal coaches is not the same as going to four different math tutors you're not just picking back up at like fractions or something like that there's a very good chance that they all told him something different had him through different exercises and had different angles in mind in many ways at his level of experience with each new teacher he went to he was basically starting over and over and over and never actually got off the ground so watching Russell Crowe sing in this movie would be like watching people line up for the Olympic freestyle and then seeing someone wearing water wings like it's impressive that they're gonna give him a try but really who let this happen and who let this happen Cameron Mackintosh everyone blames the director Tom Hooper for this film and that's not entirely fair but don't worry we're gonna get there so a lot of people don't know this but lame is is a French musical and no not like not French isn't like France it's it's French as in it was originally written in French a premiered in 1980 and in 1985 an english-language adaptation made it to London's West End all financed by Mackintosh here and since its release Mackintosh has kept the film rights to him is in a development hell he didn't want to give away the rights to the film until he could get someone who and I quote has a vision for the show that will put the original shows team including me back to work we don't just want an adaptation we want to film audiences will find as fresh as the actual show so the thing is that Hooper wanting to do the show live was literally what brought this film out of development hell because it's what eventually one macintosh of one of the things that he said to me that I went I really think this person really has a chance of making something special out of labor's rob was that he felt that the film needed to be recorded live that you couldn't you couldn't do what was traditionally done with musical films and as far as Tom Hooper goes I'm just gonna say this I'm not taking musical advice from someone who feels the need to explain what a click track is the click track gives us the pulse where the piece is flowing which is basically a sound that the orchestra hear in there is so if I'm gonna put my money on it that whole making the cast sing live on set instead of in the studio which is so stupid that I literally cannot talk about it here and finish my thoughts before the earth completes one rotation around the Sun it is just a stupid amount of time and effort to try and get a live recording to work basically what we're doing is we're right here making every actor we've gone for something which gives us as close to a studio sound as possible now each radio mic is on a separate track sometimes on lamia's we're running up to 26 tracks of radio mics movie sets are very very noisy places to be specially dead and down he's always bringing carpeting Sam is a classic case doing on my own as éponine all we heard was the rain dropping on two microphones and onto the set so all you heard was big but Walter hittin our Walter Proust was a little bit noisy so it puts on the clothes that pianist is basically playing alive into the axes earpieces we just sing at each other on an otherwise deathly silent set which is why we've put the pianist in biz box with double Plexiglas so that the microphones capturing the voices of the actors will not capture the sound of the pianists fingers hitting the keys leads to hilarious moments like this if you've only seen the film you probably can't tell it's going wrong here but those orchestra hits they're supposed to sync up with Valjean tearing up his parole slip [Music] they literally couldn't do it because hugh jackman isn't listening to the music that we're listening to it's like the whole point of the scene and they didn't get it right it is so simple and I just oh I can't okay back to curl here like I said the performance is just so bad the ending two stars were Javert commits himself to finding Valjean the end of the song is the same notes like four times and crow struggles to find them over and over [Applause] [Music] this is someone who needs help it's honestly sad to see someone getting abandoned on stage like that no one wants to see this you just want to give them a pat on the back and help them run some drills but it's not just that it's a bad performance the performance has so many issues that it actually messes with the structure of the music like okay listen to what's happening during his confrontation with Bell Shawn well Shawn's like just let me help Cosette and then I'll turn myself in you can put me in prison and Javert is all like no all lives matter yeah this is a reverse of what happens in the opening in the opening Valjean is singing look down with Javert introducing himself with this light motif do not forget my name but here chef very singing look down and Valjean is singing Javert prison guard light motif song at lost we sleep follow to the left of your artillery this bunch of shaven so until you die they've switched positions and they keep switching back and forth as the confrontation continues right here's your fear goes back to singing his original light motif it's the entire structure of the conflict these two are battling for who's gonna control the narrative does Valjean get to go and save Gazette or is he gonna go directly to jail do not pass go do not collect $200 but during this scene in the film they flop the lines so bad but for a first-time listener it's honestly really difficult to tell it's going on like listen to how this is supposed to sound so yeah the performances are so rough that it actually devalues the music which I guess is a good as time as any to get to part - Anne Hathaway okay so Hathaways performance here wasn't okay bear with me let's actually come at this from another angle so there's this thing that vocalists do that I absolutely hate and it's when they're right there's this saying that when you're a vocalist you are your instrument and it's completely true and what that means is is that when you've spent 30 years honing your instrument your voice is comparable to a masterwork instrument Pavarotti's voice was comparable to a Stradivarius they're both priceless instruments now if you have a priceless instrument like a Stradivarius worth millions and millions of whatever currency you want to pick and someone just drops that instrument in your hands your first instinct before playing it probably wouldn't be to dunk it in a bathtub full phlegm right because that's what you're doing to your voice when you cry all those tears are going down the back of your throat all that stuff that comes out of your nose is just surplus tears so when you're singing you really don't want to cry it is in your best interest to not cry when you cry you're kind of throwing out the ability to sing really well this is like this is a thing most vocalists will avoid crying but try to make it look like they're crying see memories here looks like she's crying but she's not crying she's got to hit those notes you see that in every one of those performances look at Ruthie Henshall who performed the 10th anniversary of I dreamed a dream looks like she's crying but she's not looks like she's about to but she doesn't ugly crying well not a good vocal performance make your coating your vocal folds with more phlegm than you're used to which throws off how you're used to sounding notes your diaphragm will start spasming which means you don't have complete control over your breathing then you might end up hitting your audiences with one of those and that's not good for anybody there's actually a really good cut-and-dry example here with Bernadette Peters in the live recording of Sunday in the park with George she actually cried onstage and they made her come back to dub herself in post because she wasn't as good with all that cry juice in her system George so with that in mind let's get back to Anne Hathaway now it's important to keep in mind that she did a great job here got an Oscar and everything and the reason I think she did such a good job in this performance was because when she was 6 years old she saw her mother performance Fantine on stage and a performance of lame is and that was the moment Hathaway decided that she was going to be an actress rumor has it that her mother even helped her prepare for this role in every way it kind of feels like this was her Heath Ledger Joker moment which is why I imagine she let them shave her head on camera and it worked but for as good as this as a theatrical performance as good as this is an acting performance it is not so much a vocal performance watch what happens if i black out the screen for a minute and forced you to just listen be honest with me that's not something you're gonna put on your Spotify playlist is it now one excuse that people have thrown at me is that she's sitting like she couldn't get breath that she needed or something because she was sitting which they're sitting stops you from being able to project then someone forgot to tell Ali stroker [Music] but what I will believe is that she probably practiced standing up and had her vocal coach go through with her and write down where and when she was going to breathe but when she was directed to sit down on set it meant that she couldn't get as much air as she was used to and she couldn't compensate on the fly because she's not experienced vocalists and when you mix that in with the crying we end up with all those painful gasps for air [Music] this is gonna come as a shock to some of you but it seems like that was on purpose the first thing that I did was just learn how to sing the songs properly you know where my technique was in the proper place and I knew the song backwards and forwards and then you start to apply the reality of the scene and it started to affect my voice and I started to think I can't sing this for lack of a better word I can't sing this pretty because it'll take you out of it that is just such a massive issue so I said this before in this channel like a half dozen times and I'll say it again the entire language of musical theater goes like this you talk until the emotions become so intense that you can't talk anymore and you break into song then what's the emotions are too much for song you're breaking to dance you talk until you sing and then you sing until you dance you're talk sing dance talk sing dance talk sing dance you get the idea but lame is is actually kind of unique in this system here it's almost completely sunk through with little to no dialogue which ends up making it more like a traditional opera but opera doesn't work in the same system that musical theater does just watch this a lot of lame use is what they call restitutive okay so the material is really suitable for this kind of freedom I do the soliloquy and it starts with what have I done sweet Jesus what have I done become a thief in the night become a dog on the run okay so that's if you were singing it literally be like that I can go out there and some takes I'd be like what have I done Jesus what have I done become a so what happens is that instead of using that musical theater language of moving through acting singing and dancing to convey emotional intensity the powers that be elected to make these vocal performances less like vocal performances and more like an actor's interpretation of the music so instead of going from speaking to singing we're going from singing to speaking and becoming less emotionally intense in this musical theatre structure having all these messed up musical deliveries is going to completely suck all the power out of the performance compare this what have I consciously what have I done become a thief in the night become a dog on the run to this coming back to Hathaway we see this focus on acting over music directly impact the overall musical structure of the work right here in Fantine is dying in his hallucinating Cosette we get a really important piece of music this song comes back for Eponine singing about getting ditched by Marius and again when Valjean is dying and giving his head away to Marius let's go finish this piece of music is supposed to represent like if you love it let it go or something like that Fantine is letting go Cosette Eponine is letting go of Marius and Belle John's letting go because that again I'm starting to realize that cuz that's kind of like the center of all these situations anyway Hathaway here is so fixated on trying to get that gold-plated validation that she ends up shopping the song so hard that you can barely tell that that's what she's singing if this is your first time hearing lame is it's almost impossible for you to be able to parse that these three pieces of music are all the same this just sounds like the ravings of a dying woman again compare that to what it sounds like on stage the vocal performance is so rough you can't really musically tell what's going on it's just it's it's literally wrong those are not the notes this is literally not the music of lame is but while we're here I want to talk about the part of the film that bothered me the most part three Hugh Jackman guys Hugh Jackman sucked in this movie welcomes calm God our laws when I stand the turning no one's talking about it because everyone just needs a scapegoat to point and laugh at because that's how the internet works but holy crap Jackman really did not show up for this film and when you find out why it's gonna give you a stroke prepare yourself yeah with this water restriction thing which is what bodybuilders did before a show and you can lose up to ten pounds of body weight and right off the surface do not do this at home the regime he put himself under to get to this extraordinary place where he you know had no fat on him but was still strong and you know he was he almost kind of recreated the rations are being a convict Whitman was doing I believe a lot of working out know this idea to do if he wanted to do it um Hooper first day of rehearsal said I need you actually boarding so I need you unrecognizable he said if people recognize you I want them to think you're sick in real life so I do my best so I'm gonna give all the vocalists watching this a minute to recover from how painful that was I'll explain why what you just saw was absolutely horrifying so listen I've known vocalists to not speak for several days before performance I've known vocalists to not speak for several days after a performance as well kind of like an athlete dunking their body in an ice bath to recover I have heard of vocalists completely cutting out dairy and sugar from their diet which to be fair all of this seems like something that the cast was instructed to do as well there's no coffee there's no dairy there's a tea I was asleep I drink hot water with lemon all day long I'd go on vocal risks some days where I don't speak at all but like I've heard of vocalists wrapping a damp washcloth over their nose and mouth when they travel on an airplane because the air is too dry eight cups of water a day is a bare minimum for vocalists like I can't even begin to express how much of a bare minimum I've heard of some vocalists carefully monitoring their menstrual cycle because they insist that as estrogen levels decline their body will hold on to more water and their vocal folds will swell which will make them sound more raspy I've known opera productions that only have their performers do something called marking during rehearsals which basically means that they like don't sing at all marking is when you see in a supersoft almost non singing way to be clear here in Opera rehearsals they won't have their performers actually sing to preserve and not strain their voices for professional vocalists only at the absolute highest level of operatic performance will you hear about rehearsals going full force and even then you're dealing with people that are so good that you only need one rehearsal before they had the entire showdown I've heard of some pretty insane things to prepare and conserve your voice before performance which makes this whole situation absolutely horrifying like I'm not gonna crack any jokes here this isn't funny Jackman put himself at very serious risk of doing permanent damage to his voice because he wanted to look like Wolverine in a scene where he isn't even shirtless this is one of the most reckless and insane things I've ever heard of somebody doing for a performance forget no one checking in to make sure the crow is going to his vocal lessons the fact that this happened at all is terrifying it is genuinely baffling that he's saying all this of the smile on his face like he's proud of it or something but it gets even worse that kind of fitness really helped me because singing live if I every take is daunting there are some days where you're singing 1012 hours a day and you need to be right on it at the tenth hour as you are in the first hour I never wanted to go on and on about it but that weight loss was not a long-term good thing for my health and it took a really long time to come back from it in order to do the transformation I'd lost a lot of weight in a very small amount in about two weeks so I lost an healthy amount amount of in a very short amount of time and I was still really sick because of it so talking about to me after that one was the fourth take and he said I'm very happy and I said I don't want to keep going and so we shot for another eight hours and then at the end of that is eight hours we looked at each other and said it was that one that we shot in the morning here you start the song you sing the whole damn song except you go for how many times is the blog after died in a given day I'm a psycho mone I say this all the time and no one believes me I know people who have permanently damaged their vocal folds from just doing the standard eight shows a week rotation people get hurt when they don't do this properly to have your performers run through numbers over and over and over at full blast for ten hours straight is a goddamn miracle that no one got hurt and I don't mean like oh they got a sore throat I mean like the full Miles Davis developed polyps and could never speak properly again the entire cast was so dangerously close to this it's unreal but the thing is that this is probably the biggest reason they all suck not only do you have a bunch of people with like no musical theater experience but even the people who do have musical theater experience are dehydrating themselves for three days before singing for 12 hours straight days on end of course they're gonna suck Jackie just sounds like he's rubbing two pieces of sandpaper together beneath the lash up on the rack I feared my shame you may katha leasing the scene for eight hours only to use the take from when she's fresh in other news Tom Hooper discovers that water is wet like okay look at it this way remember that fight scene from the last Jedi that everyone made fun of because I had a bunch of mistakes or whatever imagine this after they've been at it for ten hours that's what you're looking at for this entire film and that doesn't just go over the vocal performances it's how they treated the orchestra as well at the end of a long day which was this is the end of our third session we got so that's sort of seven hours later the play spontaneity you know nearly ten hours playing they found their reserves and we got it but here's the thing even when you consider all that all these technical problems having to sing live on set dehydrating yourself for three days singing for 10 to 12 hours a day there are still bad choices being made here so the song bring him home I almost want to touch on it because Kevin Lynch made an absolutely amazing video specifically on this number and you should absolutely go watch it but the idea is that this song is all about Valjean praying to God so it's higher up because he's literally singing up he's singing to God who is up in the sky but this song is also really quiet because it's personal it's just this mono e mono kind of thing like yo God listen I'm trying to wingman for my daughter so can you not have this guy get infection when I drag him through a literal sewer with all these open wounds so having a sing high and quiet makes it really demanding to sing you have to give yourself enough breath support to sound a note but not enough to get too loud you have to thread the needle it's all about a demonstration of control over your voice that's why vocalists tend to use this song when they want to flex but jackman over here just elects to belt it as loud as he can like a gorilla in a carwash and it similarly doesn't even make sense just like the choices in this film like everything else in this film the performance is just so rough that at times it's musically unintelligible like listen right here this innocent who bears my face who goes to judgment did my please that must my name until I die be no more than an alibi must I live my soul belongs to God honey I made that bond and long ago I don't know if it was him saying that he wanted to speak this line or if it was Hooper or if it was Macintosh or if this was take 11 and jackman was just exhausted and hadn't had any water in three days because I just can't get over how stupid that was geez you basically can't tell that this is the line from one day more these men who seem to know my crime will surely come a second time one day Malti this innocent who bears my face who goes to judgment in my place this innocent who wears my face and goes to judgment in my place that must my name until I die be no more than an alibi must I live my soul belongs to God honey I made that bar than long ago my son Bogey's long this is Valjean resolving himself to confessing to having faked his identity and throwing away the life he's made this is his call to destiny this is what he sings during one day more this is literally like this is literally his called destiny his entire identity its what governs all the choices that he makes for the rest of the show and by having this stupid half spoke and delivery who can't really tell that's what's going on it completely undermines the musical structure of the work as a whole and you get the exact same thing during the opening soliloquy like how are you even supposed to like pick up half of what's going on but here's the part that's gonna really throw you for a loop part four I love this movie because of how it proves itself right this is one of the most fascinating films I've ever seen and I don't just mean it to sound like another pretentious youtuber I have never seen a film so clearly make every single wrong decision and then in a matter of minutes do everything right it's like if half the time Tommy my so just dr. Jacqueline mr. hided himself into Steven Spielberg or something it's unreal let me explain at the end of act 1 were introduced to older Cosette Marius and Eponine played by Amanda Seyfried Eddie Redmayne and Samantha barks these three completely steal the show not only do they steal the entire show but they prove how and why all this nonsense can actually work like okay I don't like the whole recording life thing I think it's an absolutely terrible idea but listen problem with that is that you have to make all your acting choices three months before you've even met the actor you're working with by recording it live Tommy's allowing us the spontaneity of normal film acting okay that's a very good point but that's coming from Eddie Redmayne and while he's won a Tony for some boring no music theater stuff at least as far as I can tell he's had no professional singing experience prior to this film in fact depending on how you look at it he technically has less singing experience than Russell Crowe but take a look at what happens when you go to just one vocal coach and practice a whole bunch [Music] Oh in fact Redmayne here does what Jackman doesn't for empty chairs at empty tables he starts soft and in falsetto before building up to belting [Music] that's exactly what Colm Wilkinson does for bring him home [Music] I just want to take a minute here to say that I think it's pretty cool that they brought him Wilkinson to be the bishop it's poetic the old Valjean baguettes the new Valjean I like that but back to Redmond here he absolutely brings the heat he does way better than the Jonas brother and credit where credit's due Nick Jonas doesn't do a bad job here it was a little which I'd like to bring attention to the fact that the guy who has no prior singing experience is doing a better job than someone who hosted the Tonys not only that but check out cassette and Eponine here ciphered over here did mama mia so she's already got the chops but Samantha barks was Eponine in the 25th anniversary not only does she have experience singing on stage she has experience singing on stage being this character and it shows because she blows every other performance out of the water oh you wanted to look like I'm crying without me actually crying it's growing at my performance no worries I'm Samantha barks and I'm a badass hey do you want to know it's harder than belting while sitting down having to sing quietly with someone inches from your face while you have debris digging in your side and you're lying on your back most of your lungs are on your back so she's having her working it's her entire body weight to get air but it's no problem for her because she's insane and threads that needle because she's done it a thousand times on stage and is really really good I don't wanna leave ciphered out here omit she's got that crazy snow-white vibrato [Music] but my god compared to the rest of the cast I could listen to her saying all day just listen to this trio [Music] oh my god dude it is just so good they are just so perfectly in tune okay and here's Jack Minnie crow during the confrontation and here's the trio of perfection confrontation tree of perfection it's almost difficult to face the fact that these two scenes are from the same film and with that I kind of like to address the elephant in the room the elephant in the room is if you wanted to capture the fresh energy of a live performance why would you do 12 consecutive hours of takes these people only got to do it once and they only needed to do it once we're listening to exhausted performers do their best in what is let's be generous here and call them non-ideal circumstances but then I guess these guys probably aren't as tired because you only need one or two takes when you're killing it this hard [Music] oh my god Wow it's perfection you know it's common knowledge at this point that Hooper tried to imitate what he did with Liam is when he went on to make 2019 scats and that was a dumpster fire you could check out Lindsey Hollis as a video if you want to know more on that but the part that entertains me the most is that when he went on just secured the rights for Katz Hooper offered the leading roles to Hugh Jackman and Anne Hathaway he was literally just trying to make lame is to electric Boogaloo obviously they both declined in fact even fewer people know this Taylor Swift originally auditioned for Eponine and lost to the Queen Samantha barks so when cats came around Hooper gave Swift the role of bumble arena without an audition and we all know how that went because that's the kicker that's the real punchline to all this you ready for this these actors know that they're better than this film they know that they're better than just this one performance don't just take my word for it that is so much more clear than what made it into the film such things be right it had come to hit this world things be and Hathaway is no slouch either it's amazing what you can get out of your performers when they're hydrated and not malnourished they can literally do a better job standing outside in the cold that's not how this is supposed to work I like Li miserab I think lame is is a good musical lame is is good these performers are good and somehow bizarrely this film proves that you can actually have a good performance given exceptionally unreasonable circumstances but this is not a good performance of lame is lame is is a very simple very straightforward musical and I know that I've just been showing the concert versions here but you get the idea this is not a musical that necessitates some kind of wire work or something like that it's one of the easiest most concise works to put on and uses a model to explain to people how reoccurring themes and light motifs function in a larger work but this like I wish I could end on a joke here I have nothing to say just damn thanks for watching I'd like to thank my patrons for making these videos possible with an extra special thank you to Alex Cole Kowski Alex clinker always posh fantastic mr. Benn captain Casey Christian Clara tan Darrin Algren Elise and Thomas Constantine Google it Hayden Elsa I want you to tell me if my fear is justified that no one will pay attention to me if I'm honest about my addiction of ice cream Jacob solace John Egbert Jordan Adams Julian Du Bois Ciaran Rosa now Kate Jay Michael Hubbard Mike Visnjic myth Luke Zdenek Myron John to Turin Nicholas Quinn pray Locke Rafael Martinez Dallas Ric Osbourne Who am I wisdom Minari Kell tear Joe angle and majors led weena Elizabeth the fourth the language guy kid when you I'm sorry I'd also like to thank everybody who requested that I talk about lame is I love this musical so it was tons of fun to talk about even if I was complaining most of the time if you like it just out here be sure to subscribe and check out my other videos follow me on Twitter and twitch to have your musical questions answered live and if you really like what I'm doing then consider supporting the channel on patreon but that's all I got for now thanks for watching so I know that when you do a movie musical you have to cut out a number here they're just to make it fit the runtime I just think it's hilarious that they managed to reduce an entire musical number to Hugh Jackman screaming marksman it's just the funniest thing to me

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Views: 1,642,538

Rating: 4.684032 out of 5

Keywords: Les Misérables, Les Mis, Les Miz, Hugh Jackman, Anne Hathaway, Russel Crowe, 25th anniversary, Tom Hooper, Cameron Mackintosh, Performing Live, Amanda Seyfried, Eddie Redmayne, Samantha Barks, Recording on Set, Vocal Tech, Vocal Coach, Valjean, Javert, Fantine, Cosette, Marius, Eponine, Musical Theater, Stage Musical

Id: 1ikqU6G6Xgs

Length: 38min 36sec (2316 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 30 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/J0ester1234]

I watched the whole 38 minutes and was just in awe of how much agreement I had. Imagine if they did a proper film for like the 40th anniversary. No stupid live singing, and an actual musical theatre heavy cast, rather than people that are good for the posters (Crowe, Hathaway etc)

[u/starrequiem]

The ultimate disrespect of the whole movie is them casting Hadley Fraser as a soldier that appeared for 2 minutes and then have Russell fucking Crowe sing as Javert.

[u/DanakAin]

I agreed with him so much. Jackman, Crowe and Hathaway are way more actor-like then they are musical like (even Jackman still has that "movie" acting trait). It's great to see Eddie go into it with basically no theatre experience, along with Samantha, Aaron and Amanda and slaying it. Heck, the ABC's all slayed it.

[u/PasadenaPriority]

This was so interesting. I never liked the film because it didn’t “sound right”, and I never understood why.

[u/Bo_the_oboe]

I've watched this a few times and i gotta say that i actually agree with him for a lot of it. I still like how Anne Hathaway did I Dreamed a Dream, and i still think Russell Crowe sounds pretty good, but Hugh Jackman was never my favorite part of the movie, so for someone to give him some criticism instead of slapping it all on Russell Crowe was refreshing.

[u/__Pale__Light__]

His Hathaway take is so terrible it nearly ruined the rest of the video for me.

A film requires a more convincing cry than a live performance, obviously. She had to actually cry, else it might as well have just been another filmed version of the musical.

Both are adaptions, acting like they have to be 1:1 is ridiculous. Obviously the film is going to lean more heavily towards acting.

And her gasps of air were obviously not intended to make the song more pleasing to hear.

Wow believe it or not that was intentional!

No shit.

None of his complaints should be directed at Hathaway, this all falls under his first point of criticism, the live performance. Which I agree with.

[u/bvnguyen]

Jean Valjean's role was tenor. And Hugh Jackman was a baritone. I loved les miserables, seen it several times in Chicago, Louisville, Nashville, and a student version that was done here at the University of Kentucky. I hated this version.

[u/CaptainLexington]

I found this guy's argument so frustrating, and I think the segment about Anne Hathaway is a good example of why. He points out that you can't really cry and also sing super well. This is may be true, but to interpret it as a criticism is to take for granted that it's more important for Fantine to sing well than for her to convincingly cry. The whole point of filming live is that Tom Hooper (and the others involved) believed that isn't true. You may disagree, but that doesn't make the performance bad. They just weren't trying to please you. There are already plenty of technically excellent renditions of Les Miserables, and there is no point in throwing another on the pile. The movie made the deliberate decision to sacrifice technical excellence for great acting performances. I happen to think this paid off. You may not, but I don't think that makes the decision categorically wrong.

tl;dr To criticize the music in the movie for its technical flaws that were deliberate creative decisions is to misunderstand what the movie was attempting to do. It was not trying to sound perfect.