Director: Craig Gillespie
Writers: Dana Fox, Tony McNamara
Cast: Emma Stone, Emma Thompson, Joel Fry, Paul Walter, Hauser, Mark Strong
Cinematographer: Nicolas Karakatsanis
Editor: Tatiana S. Riegel
Streaming on: DisneyPlus Hotstar
FILM REVIEW: Some origin stories are best left untold, says Neil Fletcher
LURKING in the middle of the saccharine 1961 Disney classic 101 Dalmatians – like a turd in punchbowl – was Cruella de Vil, the London fashion witch and stuff of nightmares not because she was rude, ghoulish and maniacal, but because she wanted to skin those adorbs little puppies. Not even Dracula or Jack the Ripper would stoop that low.
This week’s release of Cruella, part of Disney’s ongoing policy of strip-mining their IP assets, provides an origin story for the poor, misunderstood villain, and while it is two hours plus of Emma Stone donning posh vowels and a gothy visage, first we are taken back to her schooldays as Estella, a brattish whirlwind who gives as good as she gets.
The 1961 film was etched in our collective memory as a classic before the company revisited the theme in 1996 and 2000, bringing us moe spotted mutts with two live-action outings that paraded Glenn Close in the role of Cruella. And now the time has come to pick her apart and find out why she just had to get those puppies, as it were.
We meet Estella as a spunky and chippy orphan (are there any other kinds in the Disney omniverse?), who moves to London in the 1970s right before the seismic eruption of punk rock. Her rebellious streak and eye for design allow her to quickly make a splash in the capital, as the bad girl designer of the moment, threatening to usurp the local grande dame of haute couture, the Baroness, played by the wickedly arch Emma Thompson. With a dash of All About Eve, some great production numbers and stupendous costume design from Jenny Beavan, the movie is often fun, inventive and gorgeous to look at. But sadly it also lapses into repetition and monotony once you get past how deliciously wicked everyone is. And the constant intrusion of music is often a little off-putting, with numerous tracks inserted which had not yet been released in the time movie is set. Baz Lurmann may pull it off, but director Craig Gillespie does not.
Cruella attempts to be several films at once — a heightened glimpse of the fashion scene, a heist movie, a revenge tale — and isn’t terrible at any of them, but what could have been a gripping narrative about a woman gradually giving in to her darker impulses is undercut by its need to tie into a family-friendly Disney property.
The cruel and manipulative Baroness is really the character more suited to a villain origin story. Cruella is no heroine, but her offences pale in comparison to the Baroness’s capacity for inflicting torment. The film becomes a slog to sit through once the two begin their game of one-upmanship. In the end it’s a muddled, too-long franchise filler.
Similar in tone to recent sagas about Tony Soprano, the Joker or Maleficent, this is an attempt to create a compelling human saga about how mistreatement, trauma and character flaws can take a misguided child and turn them into pure evil…although all that darkness is leavened with some great costumes, eye-popping musical set pieces and a campy, over-the-top representation of pre-punk London. Nonetheless, one walks away wondering if any of this was really necessary. Revisiting misunderstood supervillains and sorceresses is less about breathing new life into cultural touchstones and more about the dearth of new ideas and an obsession with returning again and again to old reliable franchises to mine them for any last scraps of economic value. This movie is all bark, no bite.
