Let's start with some disclaimers:

• If you are actually interested in seeing this movie, I would recommend you save yourselves.  But if you must, then beware that there might be a minor spoiler or two in here, nothing big though.

• I'm not going to pretend that I was dragged into this kicking and screaming.  On the contrary, this debacle was actually my idea.  I was going to play the hero and I planned it out for my wife, our kids and other family members to go to an afternoon Disney movie over the holidays.  Some hero!

• Please don't write me off as some cranky old man, or some stubborn jock.  Remember, I was the one who wrote fondly of my love for the play and the movie Les Mis.  I absolutely love Disney World.  Some of the greatest memories of my life were taking my young daughter to the movies to see Aladdin, Beauty And The Beast and The Lion King.  I thought this would be a cute movie along those lines.

• I am not one easily offended.  I have only walked out of one movie in my life, and that was the mock-umentary 'Wired' about John Belushi's life and death.  It's not easy to piss off a young man in his mid-20's.  Still shaking my head over that one.

We'll call this half movie review/half public-service warning.  Yes, the movie was...Into The Woods.

Obviously I got the wrong impression from the commercial that this would be your expected, warm, star-studded holiday Disney homage to classic fables.  Instead what we got was an ear-piercing mish-mosh of disjointed stories successfully taking every traditional moral and crumpling it up into a ball, only to replace it with...well, a crumpled-up ball.  The good guys in the story did bad things, the bad guys in the story did worse things and mostly were killed off (or blinded).  Then some of the good guys were killed off and then in the end the good guys finally realized that the reason bad things happened to them was that they really hadn't acted like good guys.  The only message I could get from it was that everybody is selfish and greedy and we should just accept it.  How do you have a fairy tale with no likable characters.  I won't even delve into the creep factor that wreaked from Johnny Depp's Big Bad Wolf.

All of this lovely, classic story-telling was beautifully wrapped inside a musical who's piercing pitch could only be re-created on Thanksgiving when the smoke detector goes off after Grandma has burned the turkey.  Character after character barked inane rhymes and eerie chants that may as well have been one long Excedrin ad.  Zero good music, zero memorable songs.  Every time you thought the story was coming to a merciful end, the plot took another baffling turn as if it was written by a petulant child playing 'Mad Libs' who didn't want to go to bed.  Be prepared with rations...the movie is literally 6 1/2 hours long!

Somehow it seems that everyone I've spoken to hated it...except for teenage girls, who almost universally liked it.  It is completely baffling to me and I suppose this should solidify the galaxy-wide gap between my and a teenage girls' sensibilities.  Perhaps it was like 'Glee' meets 'Grimm.'  I know, I know...don't ask why, just accept it, smile and move on.

Nothing like having to apologize to ladies, gentlemen and children of all ages.

Anyone else have any thoughts on it?