First peak at Les Mis: how'd they do?

I am a Les Mis DWEEB.

If there were a Bieber-level Broadway Play fangirl equivalent, I'd be the president of that club. But without the death threats and pushing other girls and trying to have the play's babies sort of thing.

Er, well -- if you could knock me up with a little Royal Albert Dream Cast, I might think about it. Little sweaty-faced Broadway Singers kicking in my gut sorta sounds fun.

Anyway -- some background statistics that might embarrass a lesser woman:

I got my hands on the cassette tape soundtrack when I was about 9 years old. My sister and I learned every word of that thing after a few listens and sang along with the earnestness, and fervor, and complete lack of emotional understanding that only elementary school students can manage.

Saw the play for the first time when I was about 10. Loved it. At ten, I loved that "On My Own" tune the best -- even grade-school kids understand unrequited love. Actually, I was a pro at the unrequited part for probably the first twenty years of my life.

My sister and I owned a L-O-T of Barbies. Enough, in fact, to recreate the entire Les Mis cast and act it out with the dolls with the cassette tape soundtrack in the background. We particularly liked to giggle while staging the "Empty Chairs at Empty Tables" scene with all of our Ken dolls hovering like spooky ghosts in the windows of our rather over-sized Barbie house.

In middle school, I took it upon myself to read Victor Hugo's entire Les Miserables novel, cover to cover. It was a lot for my Mossimo-wearing, Ace of Base-listening geekster brain to process, but I was a particular breed of literary fiend, even back in those no-hips, frizzy-haired days of braces. I was a Smart Kid. I could wave all 1376 pages of that beast in front of my other Smart Kid friends like a bastion of nerd superiority.

It was an agonizing read, frankly, with too many historic details and too few make-out scenes, but an equally Les Mis-enthusiastic friend of mine created something of a literary Race to the Top and she who finished first....uh....probably had fewer friends and no after school sports (yours truly).

THEN this Les Mis-enthusiastic friend of mine and I discovered the PBS broadcast of the 10th Anniversary Concert at London's Royal Albert Hall. We recorded it from TV, got pretty skilled at fast forwarding through the PBS sales pitches, and watched that thing EVERY AFTERNOON after school for a good few months.

My super-smart girlfriend (who went on to MIT, and has a closet full of fancy degrees from places like Berkeley and can call herself Dr Les Mis Fan now) had the good sense to be romanced by the Inspector Javert character. Truly, there's a good deal of complexity and raw internal conflict there. He's a more sophisticated character by whom to become entranced at the age of 15. Me, I was still an Eponine enthusiast, waxing emotional over the unrequited love bit. Ah, to die dramatically in the arms of The One Who Got Away.

This was our Twilight.

I saw the play again in college, and every time it came to town thereafter. I think I've seen it half a dozen times by now, I've bought every iteration of the soundtrack that exists, I love it every bit as much now as I did then.

As I've aged, my allegiance to Eponine has drifted.....I began to recognize the heartbreaking poetry of Valjean's prayer in "Bring Him Home." I shivered, goosebump-ee when Javert pitched himself off of the bridge at the end of his suicide tune.

But the moment that caught me off guard came more recently, while watching the Final Goodbye Tour (or whatever they called it) when the Company came through Seattle a few years ago.

Fantine took the stage to sing I Dreamed a Dream.

Within measures: tears. Tears dripping down the cheeks, tears running off the tip of my nose, tears collecting on my chin. Whoa -- this woman has SUFFERED. This woman has loved and lost, and given up her child and seen her man abandon her and she has to fight to find enough to eat. This woman KNOWS what it's like. Forget that unrequited love nonsense -- this is the REAL deal. This is the soft-spoken agony of a women who's stony cynicism is borne of seeing everything and everyone she loved ripped from her bosom, who's suffered public shaming, seen all of her dreams dead and buried, who's sold her hair and teeth for a bit of bread, who's walking dead. Life killed the dream, dumped her in hell, kicked her around a bit, left her for dead.

That's intense.

That's emotional.

That's.......the song that Anne Hathaway sings during the trailer for the upcoming Les Mis movie.

Uh, yeah. I mean, who cares about the head-shaving and the thinnification of The Hathaway if she can't sing The Important Song, right? RIGHT - ?????????

Well, I have good news and I have bad news.

The bad news: Anne ain't Broadway caliber in the pipes department. She comes no where NEAR it.

The good news: I'll give the girl credit -- what she lacks in vocal control or power or technical prowess, she manages to ALMOST make up for in pitiful, raw emotion and a face that actually does manage to look like it's seen the death of a thousand puppies every night before bed.

I skipped the Liam Neeson film from a decade ago -- I loved the play too much to even give that movie a chance. BUT -- there's been so much press, so much speculation about casting, so many gossip rumours about who snagged which role that, I'll admit, I'm actually thinking I'll see this iteration.

Okay, I'm no Hugh Jackman fan, but we know the man can sing. And honestly, while I'm no Amanda Seyfried fan, her wide-eyed, grinning, innocent girl-face actually seems like a pretty good fit for the Cosette character. And Russell Crowe as Javert? That *might* be a small bit of genius. He's older, rustier, more jowel-ee these days -- that look works, in this case.

I'm willing to give this whole brouhaha a chance.

Here's the trailer. Give it a go. It's not so bad. That whole "grizzly, bearded Valjean taking on the open ocean" bit seems more than a little overwrought, but hey -- it's Hollywood -- the boyfriends of the droves of woman flocking to (hopefully not) sing along need at least a few special effects to hold their attention, right?