`LES MISERABLES' SUFFICIENTLY GRIM AND GRAVE.(LIFE & LEISURE)

Byline: BOB STRAUSS Los Angeles Daily News

LOS ANGELES -- The latest screen adaptation of Victor Hugo's durable ``Les Miserables'' is good-for-you cinema all the way. Meticulously mounted, unfailingly grave even as it sidesteps some of the ultimate downer novel's more depressing elements, watching it is like attending a particularly rich day at school.

There are good reasons why, nowadays, the stage version of ``Les Mis'' is enlivened with stirring music and comic relief, or why the last major movie version, Claude LeLouch's 1995 French production, cleverly updated many of the themes to an action-packed World War II. Ennobling as the sprawling tale of …