12 Movies That Were Ruined By One Dumb Decision

2. The Live Singing - Les Miserables

On the face of it it sounds like a genius idea. Instead of having the actors mime on set to pre-recorded songs, why not have them belt out the numbers there and then? You get a more honest performance (whatever that means), as well as unique selling point to trot out during the press junkets.

And, in Les Miserables defence, to some degree the conceit of the actor's singing every line of the musical live works. Anne Hathaway's I Dreamed A Dream is certainly more impactful thanks to her belting it out rather than mouthing the words and it kinda excuses Russell Crowe's, shall we say questionable, delivery.

But for every gain there's a much bigger loss, with the trick making the movie feel less epic than the restricted stage musical on which it's based. The cinematography of Les Mis comes in two flavours - so close to the actor's face you can almost smell their breath and massive wide shots dripping with CGI - which after two and a half hours gets incredibly tired. And while this may be a creative decision made by director Tom Hooper, we're more inclined to think it was done because of the restrictions placed on the film by the amount of recording equipment present on set; you can't have the boom mike in shot after all.