Les Miserables Movie Reviews

Set in the 19th century, this Tom Hooper adaptation of the Victor Hugo classic merits attention first and foremost for its stellar cast. Each song carries the power of the words the characters utter. When they're angry, you feel the rage, when they're joyous, it's spring and when they're in tears, everything turns a darker shade of dismal grey. As Valjean, Jackman plays a variety of parts exceedingly well. He's a convict, he's a factory owner

The King's Speech director Tom Hooper's big-screen take on the long-running, universally beloved stage musical 'Les Miserables', is a bold and audacious piece of work, but one that overstays its welcome and leaves you feeling overfed in the end. More ambitious than Chicago or Mamma Mia!, Hooper's film is a sprawling tale of love, idealism and sacrifice set in 19th century Paris. What separates Les Miserables from the dozen-odd screen musicals

Victor Hugo's novel is as much about the characters as the circumstances that shape them. A film, even at 158 minutes, can't be expected to go into all that. More an adaptation of the longest-running musical Les Miserables based on the novel, that was first staged in 1985 and has since won over 100 awards, the film remains true to this version's spirit, its songs and even how it is picturised visually. Does it do justice to Hugo's underlying theme

British director Tom Hooper earned Oscar glory with The Kingâ??s Speech, his multiple-trophy winning last film. He looks to replicate the haul this year with the lavishly mounted Les Misérables. The film is nominated in eight categories including Best Picture, though Hooper has tellingly missed out a Best Director nod. Hooperâ??s new effort gives Victor Hugoâ??s 1862 French novel of the same name a musical twist. The film tries being topical

In the first long act of Les Miserables, Anne Hathaway opens her mouth, and the agony, passion and violence that have decorously idled in the background of this all-singing, all-suffering pop opera pour out. She’s playing Fantine, the factory worker-turned-prostitute-turned-martyr, and singing the show-stopping I Dreamed a Dream, her gaunt face splotched red and brown. Hathaway holds you rapt with raw, trembling emotion

Once in a while there comes a movie that automatically deserves the tag of Epic. Tom Hooper's monumental, grandstanding adaptation of Les Miserables does that and even more: it earns the second word of the phrase popularised by Twitter: it is definitively (and, in every sense, literally) what is called Epic Fail. Look, I love musicals. Love 'em to bits. I have an obvious (if shameful) bias toward clever lyric, and when it skilfully drives narrative