So I was at the movies tonight, hesitating between Brian De Palma's new movie, Passion, and the big Les Miserables production. I dare say some will declare me crazy for ending up picking the latter; and to be honest, while I wouldn't say I regret my choice, I am now inclined to think that very likely Passion is indeed the better film.

Unlike many, perhaps most people who go to see the movie - or so I'd assume - I had not in fact seen or heard Les Miserables before, excepting one or two songs like I Dreamed a Dream that have become famous in their own right. This movie version has the advantage of a star-studded cast, which should help at the box office, but I'm not really convinced it's actually a good thing for the movie as a musical.

Russell Crowe in particular is the problem here. He plays the villain of the story, Javert, who doggedly pursues the hero Jean Valjean (Hugh Jackman) through the years, as Jean tries again and again to leave behind his past as a convict who violated parole. It's not that Crowe can't sing at all; when he gets big dramatic songs that he can belt out, he is tolerable (though I'm sure there are plenty of actors who could have done a better job while not being noticeably worse on the acting side). The semi-sung, semi-parlando lines inbetween though, or more modest songs, are a problem, and not only for Crowe. Perhaps the director should have simply taken the liberty of converting those lines to normal speech, and leaving the singing for the real songs.

Jackman, Anne Hathaway and Amanda Seyfried (who play the main female roles, Fantine and Cosette) fortunately are more convincing vocally. Hathaway is the star of the movie despite limited screentime, making the most of every moment that she gets; I wouldn't be surprised to see her get the Supporting Actress Oscar for it. Sacha Baron Cohen and Helena Bonham-Carter shine as a flamboyant criminal couple, which shouldn't be a surprise to anyone.

The movie suffers from several issues that are probably to blame for the most part on the original musical, but that keep it from working very well as a movie, even by musical standards (I'm not sure what it says about the Oscars that it got a Best Picture nomination). Most obviously, the split into three "acts" with new characters in each one, with only Jean Valjean and Javert appearing throughout. Most of the characters in the climactic scenes near the end lack both the screentime and the depth to make the audience care for them, and it doesn't help that Cosette's love interest Marius (Eddie Redmayne) doesn't seem to give a damn about the far more deserving Eponine (Samantha Barks), his childhood friend who nobly overcomes her own feelings for him, as well as the hostility of her family, to help him win Cosette before proceeding to take a bullet for him (literally). Considering the way Marius seems to forget Eponine before she is even dead, I'm not sure how the audience can be expected to find his subsequent relationship with Cosette particularly romantic. And lastly, a number of songs have a tendency to get really slow during the lyrically least interesting parts (I wasn't impressed by the lyrics in general, to be honest), which really makes it hard for the actors to keep any kind of momentum going. No doubt that's an issue to some extent for most musicals, but it seems worse than in most here.

The musical, like the novel by Victor Hugo that it's based on, devotes considerable screentime and its best song ("Do you hear the people sing? / Singing the song of angry men / It's the music of the people who will not be slaves again" etc.) to the politics of 19th century France, culminating in a popular revolt against the authorities (based on the historical revolution of 1832). The revolt, from the beginning more a game of excited students than a widely supported uprising, is easily crushed, and most of its participants killed (except the protagonists, of course). Bizarrely, the ending of the movie shows the revolutionaries on their barricades once more, reprising their song, only this time with biblically inspired lyrics that speak no longer of revolution, merely of hope in very abstract terms. I can't help thinking Hugo would be revolted.

This movie version is, or so I would suspect without having seen or heard any performance or recording of the musical, a bit comparable to the Phantom of the Opera movie version a couple of years ago - it's nice to have a lavishly produced Hollywood movie to provide the images to the sound that the fans are already familiar with, but that's about it. Only on occasion are there scenes where both acting and singing are good enough to do much more than that. For those like myself who aren't already familiar with the musical, it's hit-and-miss; certainly not up to par with successful musical movies of recent years such as Hairspray or Across the Universe, to say nothing of the big classics of the genre.