I saw Les Mis on stage a number of years ago in Toronto, and didn't much care for it. I pretty much agreed with this review of that production. An excerpt:
The wife said she thought the singer who played the mother was pretty good, but I thought her voice was weak and over-amplified. I said, "The only good thing about her was that she died, so we don't have to listen to her again." Imagine my shock when she came back in the second act as a ghost. I'd've choked on my popcorn if they'd've let me have any at my seat.
It was also pretty funny during the show, when them smart-alec university students thought they knew what was good for us workers while we didn't know or care what they was talking about. I figure the real reason the workers didn't join the students at the barricades, though, is that they was singing stupid songs. The outcome would've been a lot different if Sigmund Romberg had written the rally songs: "Give me some men, who are stout-hearted men, who will fight for the right they adore..." Now that's the sort of thing to really rally the troups!
And after reading this review (which I thoroughly enjoyed), I doubt if I'll see the movie either. An excerpt:
I must say, though, that there's a chance I'll watch it some day, despite these reviews. My granddaughters love it, and one of them won a singing contest performing "On My Own" from Les Mis, which is a big plus for us.And then there's the second French revolution, and Cosette falls in love with rich student/slumming revolutionary Marius (Eddie Redmayne), and Javert still hovers in the background, obsessed with bringing Valjean to what the officer believes is justice. One of the nefarious powers of "Les Misérables" the movie is its ability to reduce Victor Hugo's novel, considered one of the great achievements in world literature, to a hacky melodrama that even a young D.W. Griffith might have found overly precious.
Oh, the performances: Jackman and Hathaway are both playing to the back balcony, rather than to the camera lens that's just inches away. Jackman over-articulates, over-gesticulates and pretty much over-everythings. Worse still are those moments where, rather than singing all his dialogue, he has to transition from speech to song within the same line. ("We're leaving now, PACK YOUR THIIIIIIINGS!") Even his "Bring Him Home" paled next to the version performed by that actor who came to Dallas 20 years ago, raising nary a hair on the back of my neck.
Hathaway, meanwhile, takes every opportunity to suck all the oxygen out of "I Dreamed a Dream," the number that is this show's "And I Am Telling You I'm Not Going." Earlier in the film, Fantine sells some of her back teeth to a shady dentist who promises to leave her "enough to bite." Clearly, he also left her enough to gnash. It's a ghastly, eyelid-fluttering, self-serving, sympathy-begging performance; Oscar voters are guaranteed to eat it up.