You'll chip your teeth.

Seriously, though, a person says "too much vibrato," and I say, "Who cares? What is vibrato? She is one of the sexiest women on the planet, and her voice is not unpleasant. Give her the Best Supporting Actress Oscar now."

LOL, really? Are you asking what vibrato is? Her vibrato (the reverberation of her voice) is almost nonstop instead of using it just at peaks of her songs. She started to sound like a drowning Disney princess.

What is the technical term for lunging right and left with your bulging eyes out? Because diva Anne Hathaway nails the technique during "I Dreamed a Dream."

Exactly. It's hard to describe but she was like a high pitched bird on every note. I think she was just singing in to high a key. There was one note where it was almost a whistle range. Not working for her. Her singing was very distracting for me and uncomfortable.

Russell Crowe sounded pretty good to me as well. Agree that Seyfried is the weakest in term of voice.

Hathaway didn't actually blew me away after knowing all the praises going in, but think Jackman definitely deserves a nom.

A lot of close-ups, and some camera choices with different angles are interesting to say the least. Certainly distracting at times. Still, overall, I'm a big fan of the musical, and now a fan of the film. It did add some nice cinematic elements, and the art direction is pretty wonderful. I enjoyed the first half better, as the songs are stronger IMO, the pace is crispier, and the interactions between the two main characters are always more interesting to me than the romance part in the second half; and not having the intermission did make the second half feel longer. Nonetheless, I've been humming the end song all day long, just like after I saw the musical's 25th anniversary edition live.

It's good. Jackman and Hathaway make the movie, they're stunning. Thought if it misses anywhere it's the revolution scenes in the 2nd half.

Kind of surprised at the weak critical reception. Show me this 2 months ago and I would've said I don't love it but it is the likely BP winner. It's exactly the movie I expected it to be

There could have been a great movie here but just too much stuff is done wrong. First the positives. Jackman, Hathaway, and Barks are great. The costume design is also very good.

Now to the bad, does Hooper just not know how to hold a camera steadily in his hand? I mean the thing jerks around so much even on just a zoom out. Also, the editing is horrible. Such examples there include when Jean falls asleep but literally half a second later is woken up. Gavroache is already a stupid character and the kid actor is not only bad in it, but you can also barely understand him.

In the end, the film is disappointing and ends up being just decent. The three great stars mentioned earlier save the film at times and ultimately get it to about a 2-star finish.

Also, Russell Crowe may just have one of the funniest (unintentionally so) death scenes of the year.

I really loved Crowe in the film, he is so underrated. He gives the second best performance in the movie, IMO.

Ranking the performances:

1. Hugh Jackman
2. Anne Hathaway
3. Eddie Redmayne
4. Sasha Baron Cohen
5. Russell Crowe
6. Samantha Bark
7. Helena Bonham Carter
8. Gavroche
9. Rebel Leader
10. Little Cozette
11. Amanda Seyfried

Amanda Seyfried was fine. She didn't have much to do, but that's mostly the role's fault itself. And she was great in the final scene. Far from a terrible performance.

I'm in the minority but since this is a singing film her vocal performance was very difficult to deal with thus her last place finish.

can't wait to own this and watch and sing with it over and over and over again

I'm watching the DVD screener right now.

A spectacular drag but somehow worth it for Hathaway's great scene and a few of Jackman's moments. I loathe the scenes with Baron Cohen and Bonham Carter, and Crowe when he is only half singing.

6/10.

Fun fact: Eddie Redmayne is 31 years old. He will be 50 before he can call himself Edward.

Argos, what are the 2012 films you really liked?

'The Imposter' got the highest grade (8/10). But I haven't really seen many movies from 2012.

Tom Hooper is a hack. The direction is dizzying and careless, and so is the editing. Thankfully, the songs, and some of the cast keep this film from being a disaster. Hugh Jackman is fantastic, Anne Hathaway is quite solid (yet not quite deserving of the many accolades she has and will be receiving). However, Samantha Barks and Eddie Redmayne shine the most, and I wish they could have been up for the Oscar in their respective categories. Amanda Seyfried and Russell Crowe seem like they belong in a high school production of the musical; Seyfried's singing was in fact cringeworthy. C

Les Misérables (2012)

Well, I caught an awards screener, and I've got to say that I kind of enjoyed it, well, in parts. I thought that all of the actors sang very well, but in particular Russell Crowe and Hugh Jackman. The best parts of the film were when Crowe and Jackman were on screen, and the worst parts were when Hathaway and Seyfried were on screen. Who would have thought that Wolverine and the guy that got a blowjob whilst hacking into a security system in early 2000s would be playing Jean Valjean, an Oscar nominated role, in 2012. It's crazy. He sang and acted incredibly well, he showed emotion and his performance wasn't just standing and singing, he acted with it. Hathaway has a fine voice for this movie, but I didn't like any scene that featured her, and was glad that she didn't last long. She's just not an appealing actress at all and is very boring to look at. Seyfried's singing gave me a headache; it's the high-pitched vibrating singing that I hated, but other than that she did well - she basically only had to stand there and look irresistable (which she did well).

I kind of became immune to the singing after a while and just followed the words to understand the story. I stuck with it because I wanted to find out the ending. But the singing was a bit much throughout. Some scenes should have just been spoken and not sung, it would have allowed for some breathing room. The production design was very good, and I just wonder how awesome of a movie it could have been if it weren't held back by the constant singing. And some of the singing was weird; in a 10 word verse, for example, they would speak 9 words, then sing the last one and just elongate the vowel in it. Is that really singing or just talking?

The Valjean vs. Javert storyline was the best. But I don't understand why he killed himself at the end. It kind of makes no sense. He also really liked standing on high rises and walking close to the edges for some weird reason. Perhaps he tripped and it was accidental. heh. Bonham Carter and Baron Cohen were a welcome comedic break in their first scene, but every subsequent scene got tiresome and I began to loathe them, especially Bonham Carter. I didn't like that little boy with the cockney voice either, and I thought that was stupid to cast him for a french themed movie. How hard would it have been to get a french boy? I mean, I understanding casting an Aussie as the lead because he's got star power and can draw crowds, but that boy being French wouldn't have mattered, and his cockney voice was SO pronounced that it just ruined the Frenchness of the movie. So I was extremely glad when he died.

I really enjoyed the slave song at the beginning. It had a recogniseable tune and I was partly singing along (not that I know the words). But every song after that kind of merged into one, they all sounded the same. "I Dreamed a Dream" was crap and boring. The scene with the song "Red - colour of desire. Black - colour of despair" was good, I enjoyed that a lot but not as much as the first scene. So overall in terms of the singing, it needed to be trimmed down a lot, but wasn't the hindrance that I thought it may have been. The running time needed to be under 2 hours because the main storyline had ended with 20 minutes still to go.

I didn't like how young Cosette aged about 20 years in the space of only 9 years. Young Cosette is quite young, about 7 or 8, then forward it nine years and she's the 27 year-old Amanda Seyfried. Easy error to correct, but lazy casting. Last point to mention, I liked how they had dirty teeth when it was needed, which is unlike other films when characters are in a dire lifestyle and yet have sparkling white gnashers (see: The Impossible etc.).

Overall it's too long and it contained too many songs with little or no reprieve, but there were signs of interest and the acting and singing were good throughout. The start of the movie was more appealing than the end and it needed more wide-angle location shots.

C+

I have never seen the movie adaptation of the musical, but I have read the book and have seen the stage version. And having read the book, and seen the play, I will say Les Miz is an over-dramafied story, so every action the characters take is meant to be taken to the emotional extreme.

Now, with that in mind, the reason Javert kills himself is because of honor. In a way it parallels Valjean's decision towards the beginning on rather or not to turn himself in (in fact, if my memory from the stage version serves me correct, they follow the same musical melody to capture this parallel). For Javert, he lived an entire life of devotion to the strict adhersion to the law. To him the law is just, and therefore he is a good person, saintly almost, because he follows the law to the best of his abilities with no exceptions.

However, this is where he meets Valjean who time in and time again proves him wrong, the even though a man does not follow the law, he is still a good person, a saintly person even. This truth is finally realized when Valjean saves Javert's life. Yet, this breaks everything Javert has held dear his entire life. So he spares Valjean in return. But he cannot live with this flaw, and so, he takes his own life instead because he cannot go on knowing he let a criminal go away. It was a thought he could not live with.

He is a gay Judge Dredd, and he cannot live when he realizes his beloved Valjean will always be straight, despite their shared predilection for musical theatre.

Yeah, it's that that I didn't like.

I should have watched the Liam Neeson version. My gran has it on VHS too. Damn it.

The Liam Neeson version is far superior. Victor Hugo's original story is a sound and moving one. It is drowned here in mostly poor songwriting ("Beggars at the Feast" is a real corker! Can't stop humming it! ...not) and a general sense of misguided bloat.

Ok, it's on my ever-growing list.

Anne Hathaway certainly doesn't deserve any recognition for her role. It was far too small and really not that special. The only one that deserves any recognition is Hugh Jackman on the acting front. Perhaps the production designers are due some merit but not a win as other movies this year were superior. Nothing for directions, nothing for music, and nothing for the technical awards including editing because it was really too long and nothing technically spectacular was included.

Tom Hooper's directorial choices do not serve the craftspeople well. You often do not see the lavish sets they have built and decorated because Hooper loves extreme, hand-held closeups so dearly.