Jandy Hardesty’s review published on Letterboxd:
All in all a solid version of the musical - excellently cast (although, like, Meryl Streep was fine but Bernadette Peters would've been awesome), and actually kept more of the structure and conveyed more of the simultaneity of events than I thought would've been possible. My only MAJOR quibble is the loss of "So Happy" going into the second act ruined one of my favorite themes of the play, which is that even though they all got their happily ever after at the end of Act I, none of them were actually happy. In this version, they were happy, but then the giant attacked. Nope.
I don't like judging movies based on how closely they stuck to their source material, but I obviously can't approach the film as someone who isn't familiar with the play - I think it overall works quite well on its own, but I think the second act does lose some steam from seeming like a coda to a standard fairy tale story rather than the entire subversive point of the play. I suspect this is why many people I know who aren't familiar with the play don't seem to like the last section. It doesn't seem like it's supposed to be there in the movie. Seriously, adding five minutes of "So Happy" would've made a ton of difference.
Still, my love for this material, for this music, and for this cast (seriously, Anna Kendrick and Emily Blunt especially blow it out of the park, and the princes stop the show with "Agony") are enough for me to still have loved the experience of watching it, and be glad it exists. I just hope people do seek out the stage version if they can.
Here's how it entered my Flickchart:
Into the Woods > Thirteen Days
Into the Woods > Seven Psychopaths
Into the Woods < The Martian
Into the Woods > Murder, My Sweet
Into the Woods > The Big Combo
Into the Woods > Little Children
Into the Woods > The Misfits
Into the Woods > A Serious Man
Into the Woods > Easy Rider
Into the Woods > Haywire
Into the Woods < Broken Blossoms
Final ranking #449 out of 3574 (87%)