I'm often surprised by the opinions of your inner Andrea (and I'm surprised by how often I appear in this post!), but I do appreciate hearing something about the plot/premise of the books. :)
I finally saw the Barbie movie, after not bothering first for Andrea-resists-things-that-are-too-popular reasons and then because I heard enough about it to get the impression it would just annoy/disappoint me (which it did). I thought the monologue was a good essay -- so it didn't leave me cold in the sense I think you mean here -- but I didn't think it worked particularly well dramatically. Er, narratively? That is, nothing wrong with the performance, but it felt to me like "And now we will have a Dramatic Monologue, because we need to get there somehow, especially because we didn't do a great job of coherently showing what we want to tell." (Possibly that opinion puts me in the "wants more subtlety" reader camp.)
ETA: also, I'm amused by your citation of the Waterloo book of Les Mis, as I've embarked on a project of re-reading it in French while attempting not to skip/skim too badly on all the 50-page-discursion-on-something-you-don't-really-need-to-hear-about sections. :) Right now I'm in the history of the convent (in which Hugo even comes out and says "this anecdote I'm about to tell you has nothing to do with the story I'm telling").
no subject
I finally saw the Barbie movie, after not bothering first for Andrea-resists-things-that-are-too-popular reasons and then because I heard enough about it to get the impression it would just annoy/disappoint me (which it did). I thought the monologue was a good essay -- so it didn't leave me cold in the sense I think you mean here -- but I didn't think it worked particularly well dramatically. Er, narratively? That is, nothing wrong with the performance, but it felt to me like "And now we will have a Dramatic Monologue, because we need to get there somehow, especially because we didn't do a great job of coherently showing what we want to tell." (Possibly that opinion puts me in the "wants more subtlety" reader camp.)
ETA: also, I'm amused by your citation of the Waterloo book of Les Mis, as I've embarked on a project of re-reading it in French while attempting not to skip/skim too badly on all the 50-page-discursion-on-something-you-don't-really-need-to-hear-about sections. :) Right now I'm in the history of the convent (in which Hugo even comes out and says "this anecdote I'm about to tell you has nothing to do with the story I'm telling").