Les Miserables

Rating:
Summary: A Miserable Adaptation
Review: Bille August's 1998 adaptation of the famous tale written by Victor Hugo in the 19th century: the Charles Dickens of French literature. A horrible adaptation that plunges the film into your typical melo-dramatic Hollywood fluff. A terrible film that shouldn't bear the title of such a great literary masterpiece.

The retelling of Jean Valjean's (Liam Neeson) tale as the ex-con whose escape leads to a chance encounter with a benevolent priest who sets him on a new course in life to do good deeds, is horribly mutilated in this watered-down version of the story. As with the recent 'Count of Monte Cristo' with James Caviezel, so many aspects of the story have been changed that there's little resemblance to the original work as intended by its author. Instead, we have the vision of poor writers who arrogantly presume to be more adept at writing a story than the most brilliant literary masters. The result is a screenplay demonstrating no talent or imagination: adding plots and themes that either obscure or completely undermine the author's thematic message. I will not go into detail as to those changes as previous reviewers have elaborated on that quite well.

The title and concept of a great story are here packed with Hollywood fluff to cover up the ineptitude of those who contrived this pathetic screenplay. Although the acting is quite good, the essential components of the film such as the screenplay, plot and theme are far below average and almost completely at odds with the original story. If you want to see a faithful adaptation of Victor Hugo's great story, don't see this film!