The prospect of another two hours and four minutes of this video is enough to ruin my evening.

I haven’t seen another stage version of Les Miserables. I read the Victor Hugo novel as a teenager and found it moving and engrossing. Years ago I saw a TV movie version in which Anthony Perkins played a very memorable Javert, but this interpretation was new to me. I’ve seen only just enough hype to know that the musical production has been a popular Broadway show and that this was its first film rendition.

Just about from the moment Russell Crowe opened his mouth to sing in a tinny, thin little voice, I wondered WTH. How could this be the menacing, obsessed Javert, and how could anyone think of casting a person who can’t deliver a strong vocal performance in a role that apparently is going to call for not just aria but recitative, scene after scene, as if it aspired to be opera?

Hugh Jackman’s singing is better, but not by much. I would have expected a good deal more difference between the voices of Javert and Valjean than I find here where they both seem to have erupted from the vocal equivalent of a bottle of vinegar.

At the half-hour mark, we were wallowing in Anne Hathaway’s delivery of “I Dreamed a Dream,” which I didn’t even know came from this musical. She did all right as Fantine, although I find her very hard to look at—one of those celebrated stars who, for me, have strongly negative visual appeal. Just about when Crowe entered the scene and started scraping aluminum cans together again, I stopped the video and bailed.

Am I supremely out of step here, or have other jellies had difficulty sitting through this overblown musical dud?

Topics: music, musicals, broadway, Les Miserables, cinematic losers