Mrs Smith and I watched it recently, and we both thought the sets, costumes, and acting were amazing. The singing however was verging on painful! Russell Crowe in particular was a shocker. There was also a scene where a girl is dressing up as a man and during the last note she holds in her song, me, and some people in front of us put our hands on our ears.
The whole singing-instead-of-talking-in-a-normal-conversation thing was grating on us by the end.
I reckon that if they used the same actors, sets, and costumes, and instead of singing everything only had three or four big songs, it would have been stupendous.
I'm intrigued that there is a Liam Neeson version. Might have to track that down......