By Luca Newton
Disney's brand new live action remake, comes in the form of a reimagining of 101 Dalmatians' evil villain, Cruella de Vil..
Yesterday, I watched Cruella at a local cinema. I honestly went in expecting a fun film, I never expected a masterpiece. And overall, I'd say I did get a fun movie - a movie that has some really solid parts to it, but also very weak links to it as well. I will go into my full thoughts in my review of Cruella (2021).
Note that there will be spoilers for Cruella in this review - if you care, please watch the movie before reading my detailed thoughts below.
So, What Is Cruella?
Cruella follows the story of a young girl, called "Estella", right from the start of her life. Emma Stone narrates as Cruella, looking over her youth. How she was troubled because of a second personality she had, she dubs "Cruella". Because of this, she is bullied and eventually expelled - Estella and her mother set out to go to London to find a new life because of Estella's rebellious nature, however, Estella's mother decides to stop off at a fancy party to get something sorted before they can move to London. Estella is asked to stay in the car with her dog, however she ignores that, and sneaks into the party. She sees the fashion, and as an aspiring fashion designer, she feels at home. However, her dog, Buddy, causes a ruckus accidentally, leading to a pack of Dalmatians ordered to chase Estella. These Dalmatians reach Estella's mother and push her over the cliff, falling to her death. This causes Estella a lot of guilt. She moved to London on her own, and meets two thieves, Horace and Jasper. They live together for 10 years, stealing together, until Horace and Jasper gift Estella a job at the Liberty London, where she is miserable. She drunkenly designs the front of the shop, which causes the owner of the shop to be mad at Estella, however, Emma Thompson's character, The Baroness, thinks it's stylish, and hires Estella. Under The Baroness' employment, Estella finds out that The Baroness is in possession of her family heirloom, which was given to her, by her mother, but was dropped when Estella was running away as a child. Estella decides she wants to get her family heirloom back, and take down The Baroness' reputation down with it, through her personality, Cruella.
I'd Say I'm A Positive Guy, So Let's Start With What I Liked..
As premises go, this is certainly a fun little one. The heist, revenge elements to the narrative certainly make the film fun to watch, and in many ways investing. I found the elevating competition between Cruella and The Baroness to be the most entertaining part of the film. I'd say the main reason was mostly thanks to Emma Stone and Emma Thompson. They both killed their roles, absolutely great performances from both of them. Every time Cruella and The Baroness shared the screen, you could tell it was gonna be a thrilling scene. And that was genuinely the reason I found this movie entertaining. Tonally, I did appreciate how Cruella knew what it wanted to be, and minus a couple aspects, I found the third act to be explosively fun.
Cruella is a well-made film. I really enjoyed the soundtrack they went with for it, a lot of great songs. And I certainly love good music in films, as they always tie some form of connection to that film, to make them more memorable, and definitely more entertaining. The costume design was incredible, I love Cruella's attires, they were all very dynamic. The film had surprisingly good editing, and it certainly had a look to it, thanks to the way it was shot.
All That Being Said, Cruella Has Its Issues..
Cruella has a pacing issue. I believe that the second act of the film was way too long, which leaves a movie that is over 2 hours long, that, in my opinion, really didn't need to be that long - and when I feel something is starting to drag within the second act of the movie, I feel that's a problem. Additionally, I felt like overall, Cruella was pretty boring from a narrative standpoint. The idea of someone being casted out from society so much that they feel the need to rebel, and eventually get revenge by using an alternate personality that represents one's true self sounds a bit familiar to a certain other film. The difference is, Joker doesn't make its character a hero, it's a corruption arc - Cruella isn't. Instead, it's a heist movie, then a revenge movie, and it just felt like, to me, that's something done before, and way better too.
Additionally, I thought that the decisions this film made ended up straight up absurd a lot of the time. The whole, Estella's mom died due to dogs pushing her off a cliff thing is as absurd as everyone says it is - and not just because it's fundamentally an awful idea, but it's also really poorly executed. I mean, the way it was shown was almost comedic. The way the dogs pushed her a bit, and she went flying and doing backflips down the cliff was absolutely hilarious, and something tells me I wasn't supposed to feel that way. Furthermore, near the end, when Cruella is enacting her final plan to get The Baroness behind bars, she gets The Baroness to push her off the cliff, in order to show the world her true nature - and originally I was actually pretty intrigued by how she would get out of this, if she even did. Yet she managed to pop out a parachute and like... nobody noticed?!
Cruella Failed Conceptually, And Was Always Doomed To
I think the biggest offence of Cruella, was the fact that as a concept it failed miserably. I do believe, in a world where Disney grew a pair, or some other studio made this, that they could have salvaged this concept, and made a better film out of the concept.
Cruella de Vil is terrible person. She is asked to look after 101 Dalmatians, and she comes in wearing the skin of an actual Dalmatian, and is literally abusing these dogs. That is horrible, and irredeemable. Imagine a film where you see the motivation behind that kind of person. How did she get to that point where she started thinking abusing dogs was a thing she could even stomach? Disney made Dalmatians kill her mother... but they didn't make Cruella blame the dogs. In fact, she has 2 close dog friends in the duration of the film, and once she has control of The Baroness' Dalmatians, she never once wants to hurt them - she jokes about skinning one, as if to say it's ridiculous to believe she ever would do something like that. She is essentially a different character entirely. This isn't Cruella at all - they reimagined her entire character so that she could be redeemable, but also made her edgy and cool, and morally grey. I think that's lame. Of course I don't find abusing dogs entertaining, but when you make a movie that shares the origins behind a pre-established villain, before they appear in the movie of which they are the villain, and give no explanation as to why they even hatched the evil plan they had in said movie, what even is the point?
I get it - they wanted to reinvent her, they never wanted to make this an actual prequel. For what they wanted, they did it. But conceptually, I think it failed miserably, and ended up nothing like what it was actually aiming to be in the first place. Because Cruella as a villain was never meant to be redeemable. Compare Cruella to Maleficent. As a villain, Maleficent, was very mysterious, and undefined with her motives, she had no backstory, and hypothetically, her actions in Sleeping Beauty could be justified with a backstory. Personally, I did think Maleficent was ok, but conceptually, I think it succeed where Cruella did not.
I believe that, if Disney wanted to make another villain sympathetic after Maleficent, someone like Ursula from The Little Mermaid would be a better idea. She is evil because she is almost like the Devil - a deed with a monkey's paw. However, with origins, she could have a reason that she's doing this, something we don't currently know, which could redeem her. It doesn't require reinventing her character or her motives.
Ultimately, I think Cruella was a mediocre film - I actually was entertained, but I thought the parts that stuck out most to me were the stupid parts. The film was carried by Emma Stone and Emma Thompson. It wasn't conceptually stable enough to fully work for me, they probably did the best they could with the film they were actually making.
3/5 - Meh
Thanks for reading.
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