If you’re a fan of Stephen Sondheim’s Into the Woods, then the soundtrack to Disney’s film version is right up your alley… or in your neck of the woods, even. Disney has made it available in two buying options. The regular release is twenty tracks and presents all of the big songs from the film, omitting a few smaller sung moments. It lacks most of the score, with the exception of one track. For those left wanting more, there is the 2-disc Deluxe Edition. It’s every piece of singing and score from the film, with two bonus instrumental tracks to boot.
I personally have never been a huge Sondheim fan and only a handful of songs from this show are ones I actively want to listen to multiple times. One problem that surfaces with most musicals that make the jump from stage to screen is casting. Stage musicals tend to prefer great singers, whereas film musicals rely heavily on well-known actors. That’s not to say that the big names in Disney’s Into the Woods aren’t great singers, but when you remove the acting performances and are left with only voices, the end results are less pleasing than the Original Broadway Cast Recording, which had the amazing voices of Bernadette Peters and Joanna Gleason.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, this soundtrack has incredible orchestrations. Accompaniment in Broadway shows is sort of limited to how many members of the orchestra can fit in the pit (unless they cheat and use pre-recorded accompaniment). Here, the arrangements feel epic. This is the biggest strength of the Disney soundtrack.
The soundtrack adds some dialogue from the film into these pre-recorded songs. For some reason the audio quality goes from great (in the studio) to poor (on the set) and I can’t figure out why. The audio quality is consistently great in the film, but the dialogue sounds overly compressed on the soundtrack. I’m glad the dialogue was added, as it would have sounded weird without it. I just wish more care was put into making the audio quality consistent.
The only other complaint I have with this soundtrack is track 1, which is called “Prologue: Into the Woods.” It’s 14 minutes and 36 seconds long! The previous soundtrack versions have lumped this mega-intro into one track as well, but I really wish (I wish) Disney had divided this up (I wish they split the track). More than anything, there are moments (in the woods) that provide a perfect track break… Sorry, I couldn’t stop singing. But in all seriousness, this track needed to be divided, if for no other reason than to have the Witch’s song about her garden and her beans and her rampion as a separate track that I could easily find and add to playlists.
Overall, Disney’s soundtrack to Into the Woods is a pleasing effort if you’re a fan of the music. It doesn’t rank in my favorite soundtracks of all time, but there are a few tracks I can’t help but listen to again. I recommend the regular edition for the casual fan and the deluxe edition for the diehard fans. Do you call yourselves “Woodsies?”