Les Misérables premiered on Christmas Day to lines of teenage girls circling around the block. Obviously, I also went to see it, and since it’s THREE HOURS LONG I thought I’d write you a quick synopsis, so you can do something more productive with your three hours such as: anything.
Some things to note before we begin: Most of the dialogue is sung. There are a lot of close ups, and it’s...set in France...if you didn’t pick up on that.
We see several dudes dressed in rags with hipster beards. They’re slaves, but also singing, this movie is clearly going to be a downer. Look! There’s Jean Valjean! He’s going to be free today, but only after he has a staring contest with Russell Crowe where they both sing their names! He’s put on a life-long parole so he can’t work. He becomes a hobo, hipster beard still in tact. One day a priest kind of helps him out with some shit, so Jean Valjean abandons his life of crime/beards/poverty. There’s a lot of singing. It’s very dramatic
Twenty years later, still in France, still very dramatic, Jean Valjean changes his name to something more french and now owns a factory for....something. But OH NO! Russell Crowe shows up to hunt down Jean Valjean for breaking his parole! Then we put down that storyline for a second just in time to see Anne Hathaway being fired from Jean Valjean’s factory because....of a reason? I dozed off here. Whatever. Anne Hathaway really needs money though so she becomes a prostitute. That was the first thing she tried. Really, Anne? So she does that for a while, and then she dies from some curable disease, but not before she sees Jean Valjean and guilts him into taking care of her daughter, Cosette! Russell Crowe is in the background trying to kill Jean Valjean in between 20 minute closeups of Anne Hathaway’s face.
Then there’s an eight year jump and Cosette is grown up, and Jean Valjean is living in Paris with her. A bunch of goodlooking young french dudes are planning a revolution, and one of them, Marius, falls in love with Cosette, but even though she loves him she has to move away because Russell Crowe is becoming borderline obsessive compulsive about capturing Jean Valjean. The young hotties do their revolution but it goes like worse than you could ever imagine. Everyone is dead, lots of singing, dramatic, pretty much the same as the rest of the movie. Marius somehow survives and Jean Valjean drags him through literal PILES of SHIT, but then Russell Crowe shows up and has another 20 minute long staring contest with Jean Valjean (and lots of close ups). Russell Crowe then does the only logical thing and jumps off a bridge. Lots of singing. French. Marius and Cosette get married. Jean Valjean dies. Lots of close ups. Everyone lives dramatically ever after.
