Saw this film and was impressed and disappointed at the same time. What's there in the film is great and certainly makes the film worthy of best picture of the year award. Again, everything there is great, it's what's not there that is the problem. The pacing is really weird, if not bad. The pacing of the film felt very rushed and consistently got better and better. The begenning you had scenes that felt like 2 seconds, and later you had scenes that felt neverending (in a good way). The pacing should have been even throughout the film. It would have been a much better experience. You can't tell me The Bishop's scene is less important than Master Of The House, which is amazing.
The pacing also had an effect on the easiness of the plot and character development. The plot was extremely hard to follow in the begening and got better due to the pacing getting slower. I've seen this on broadway twice and seen all the book adpated films several times. These told you everything compared to this film, which seemed to assume "everyone who is going to see the film, already knows the story." The character development was also effected by rushed pacing and left many characters thin as paper. For example, the Marius and Cossette love was less beleievable then love found in classic Disney princess films, yes Cinderella was more believable than this romance. Marius and Eponine showed more true love than Marius and Cossette ever did. However maybe it just makes Eponine that much more likeable, but a the same time makes Cossette seem unlikeable. Javert and Jean Valjean's characters are probably the worst affected by the film. While they have the most depth, there was far more potential for them.
Now, I should comment on the singing. There are no dialogue based scenes, there's dialogue here and there but usually there just under-the-breath comments. The singing itself was allways absolutely amazing, far better than on the stage. instead of making their vocies perfect in every way, ther was true raw emotion in their vocies. You got so much more from the characters just because of how they sung each track. And of course, recording live on set should now be done for every movie musical as it adds a sense of reality.
I really love this film, despite it's large amount of gripes. It's one of those films that's so good, yet still could be so much better. I really hope an uncut version is released on bluray, because I am certain it will be far superior. I read the shooting script for this film, and it was much better than the product on screen. So what this all this film's issues are truly related to is the editing. I really encourage everyone to see this film as it is of great quality, and I put it right next to The Hobbit and Lincoln.