Let’s start with this: if Jennifer Hudson could win a Best Actress in a Supporting Role Academy Award, despite showing no apparent capacity for acting beyond a suitable performance of a show-stopping musical number, then it’s somewhat remarkable that Anne Hathaway roaring with anguish through “I Dreamed a Dream” didn’t culminate with the personal delivery of an Oscar to her on the set of Les Misérables as the various crew members surrounded her, applauding. In bringing the blockbuster musical adaptation of Victor Hugo’s classic novel to the screen, director Tom Hooper disregarded convention and had the actors sing live on set instead of lip-synching to prerecorded vocal tracks. The reasoning is clear enough; it’s the same thought process that would discourage any director from wanting actors to mouth dialogue being played back from a tape. Since the vast majority of Les Misérables is presented strictly through song, with barely a word that isn’t sung, he wanted his performers to feel the emotions they were conveying. He wanted them to act and sing at the same time, hardly a revolutionary notion. It serves Hathaway best. She’s a raw nerve for the duration of her role, culminating in the combustion of “I Dreamed a Dream.” Despite my fanciful notion, that Oscar didn’t arrive on the set, but it sure as hell is going to be put in her trembling hands come late February.

Hathaway’s performance is the one unqualified success in Les Misérables. Other than that, it’s as scattershot as a nineteenth century firefight. By now, the storyline should be familiar to most: the noble sufferer Jean Valjean, the obsessive police inspector Javert, the doomed Fantine, the rescued Cosette, the French revolutionaries taking to the streets of Paris. The original novel approaches 2000 pages in its original French, and, even running at nearly three hours, the musical necessarily condenses and contracts. The effort shows, with much of the drama feeling rushed and confused. More problematically, the psychological underpinnings are mere shadows. That puts additional pressure on the performers to make the characters work, which in turn makes Hooper’s less successful casting choices all the more damaging, especially Russell Crowe as Javert. Hooper’s approach to filming may have been intended to show how effectively every member of the ensemble can both act and sing, but, on the evidence here, Crowe can do neither. It’s as dire a piece of uncorrected miscasting as I can recall in any recent film of this size and stature.

Between the triumph of Hathaway and the train wreck of Crowe, performers sit on all points of the Spectrum. Hugh Jackman undoubtedly dreams of this sort of film role every time he retracts his special effect Wolverine claws–he has a chance to flash his musical theater chops in the most masculine manner possible–and he does very well, even if he sometimes succumbs to overplaying the heavy drama built into the role. Amanda Seyfried has a lovely singing voice, but can’t make Cosette anything more than a bland object of romantic desire (it’s especially unconvincing that she would inspire such longing when her ostensible romantic rival, Éponine, is played by gorgeous and charismatic newcomer Samantha Barks). As for Helena Bonham Carter and Sacha Baron Cohen as villainous comic relief the Thénardiers, the clearest way I can communicate my reaction is to note that their scenes seemed to stretch on for a painful eternity. And I realize that expecting anything approaching verisimilitude in regards to the story’s French locale is the height of foolishness, but did the youthful street urchin have to squawk in a Cockneyish accent, as if he’d been shipped over from a Charles Dickens novel in some sort of legendary literature exchange program?

I can’t deny the impressive scope of Les Misérables. The whole thing groans with ambition, and if that sometimes reads as empty bombast, at least there’s a sense of spectacle to it. There’s an earnestness to the project, a fully evident desire to get this thing right for the multitudes who cherish the original musical (or maybe even the novel that provides the story) and will hold onto this for ages as the biggest, boldest record of the piece in question. Maybe that means Hooper and his collaborators occasionally overreach (and Hooper remains that most uncommon of filmmakers: one whose style alternates wildly between utterly pedestrian and garish over-direction), but it’s in the name of clawing their way towards a cinematic work that can live up to the highest of hopes. They don’t reach it. I’d argue they don’t even come all that close to the goal. Still, I admire the sweat that practically flecks the camera lens.