Disney’s film adaptation of the musical Into the Woods premiered on Christmas day of 2014 and grossed $31,051,923 in its first three days. This performance in the box office is great, sure, but the performance on screen leaves something to be desired.

Let’s be clear: It’s a cute movie – visually stunning and vocally impressive – but it lacks… something. Watching it leaves one with the general impression that the plotline is composed solely of poorly strung together musical numbers.

Into the Woods was enjoyable but fell severely short. One of the many faults involved in this musical; they removed some of the lessons that are meant to be learned by lowering the effect of some of the more violent acts that are throughout the play.

By PG-ifying the musical, Disney has robbed it of the weight that’s meant to go behind the lessons the audience learns.

The gist of the lessons remain, sure, with the whole idea that even through rough times you’ll have people standing beside you and helping you along is a major one, but without the really rough times included in the production the musical number feels hollow and trite.

The point of Into the Woods is meant to demonstrate that life is not a fairy tale, and that happy endings are hard to come by.

There are good and bad things about this adaptation of Into the Woods, but it seems to fall a little short of the expectations for it. It is a good movie but definitely could have been even better.