This is a really tricky one to talk about. Its place in the Les Mis repertoire is confusing to newcomers and the reviews are polarised which is also confusing, but I understand why.
This is a film version of a the musical adaptation of a novel. Therefore, I think that attempting to watch this without any prior knowledge of Les Mis is going to leave you confused or feeling incomplete. Les Mis is such a huge epic vast story that features many characters and covers many years and has many important grand themes. All of these cannot be crammed into a 2.5 hour movie, never mind a 2.5 movie version of a musical version of the story. Les Mis is absolutely fantastic, but I recommend to people that they understand the story in its entirety before seeing the musical. The 2018 BBC series a a great 6-hour in-depth version if you don't want to read the 1500 page novel. Then, I think you can appreciate the musical in its totality because it brings the themes and emotions of the story alive through music and musical theatre. Then, once you are familiar with the musical (there are 3 famous recordings of it available) , then you can understand the movie remake of the musical and what it was trying to achieve.
So I totally understand why fans of the musical would be disappointed in this because it features actors rather than singers, so the singing is nowhere near as good as in the musical. I also understand why newcomers to Les Mis might be disappointed in this, because on its own it is an incomplete rendering of Les Mis, there is so much depth and context that I feel you need in order to piece it all together and truly appreciate the tragedy and the themes within it. But for those who have an understanding of what came before, I think this is a really bold and commendable attempt at converting the musical to a movie format. However, ultimately, it is not as emotionally affecting as the musical because (despite some great acting) you can't get a way from the fact that it is largely through the music that the emotional heart is portrayed. And the music here is nowhere near as good as the stage versions.
I think its very important to know what the intentions for this movie were. The actors all sang live, with the intention of being able to sing as if they acting, i.e. They could slow down and speed up where they need for a more realistic portrayal of the words than a song which runs to a consistent tempo. And also not be held back by needing to hit all of the notes perfectly, a lot of lines Hugh Jackman almost speaks rather than truly sings, because he is trying to do the songs in a more realistic acting fashion. This should have been made really clear in all the promo for the film because when you know this you can appreciate more what they were attempting to do, and not just simply compare them to Colm Wilkinson or Ruthie Henshall or any of the vocal greats from Les Mis on stage. Where this works the best as it was intended is in Anne Hathaway's I Dreamed a Dream. Her raw emotional ropey speak-singing works absolutely perfectly for one of the most devastatingly human portrayals of Fantine we have. She won an Oscar for this alone, and though I'm not a huge fan of the Academy's choices I have to agree with this.
The production is beautiful and great to look at. And the casting outside of Hathaway is mostly good. Jackman I think is an excellent Valjean, as vulnerable as he is strong. And in a non-musical version of Les Mis i think he would be one of the greats. But despite his acting abilities, next to Colm Wilkinson or Alfie Boe, he is just not going to compete in fans memories.
It is a must-see, but not as your introduction to Les Mis.
