Cruella
Cruella
Starring Emma Stone, Emma Thompson, Joel Fry, Paul Walter Hauser
Directed by Craig Gillespie
Starring Emma Stone, Emma Thompson, Joel Fry, Paul Walter Hauser
Directed by Craig Gillespie
Disney has been re-inventing their beloved animated classics into live-action spectacles, and for the most part they've stayed close to their source material. "Beauty and the Beast," "Cinderella," "The Lion King," "Aladdin," and many others are pretty much re-treads of the original, while it seems that Disney is having more fun with their villains. Maleficent got a complete makeover in her solo outing, where she comes off more as an antihero than downright villain (even moreso in her second outing), and now it's time to tell the story of Cruella de Vil, the Dalmatian hating villainess of "101 Dalmatians" who wish to kill the lovable doggos to turn them into a coat. While no one asked for such an origin story, at least it was delivered with gleeful excellence by Emma Stone, but if you take out small moments that the film tries to connect the woman to the classic Disney movie, you'd be hard-pressed to know this was actually an origin story, but rather a 60s-70s style version of "The Devil Wears Prada."
Years after her mother dies and leaves her an orphan, Estella Miller (Emma Stone) lives a grifting life with her friends Jasper (Joel Fry) and Horace (Paul Walter Hauser), while she desires to be a fashion designer in her own right. She gets a low-level job at a the Liberty department store, but her talent goes unnoticed. In a fit of anger and drunkenness, she vandalizes the store's window design and makes it into her own creation. This is the same day that Baroness von Hellman (Emma Thompson) arrives, and she falls in love with the design, bringing Estella over to work with her.
Estella is at first overjoyed to work for the famed fashion designer, but she soon realizes that the Baroness isn't a nice woman, and there's connections to her past that leads Estella to seek vengeance on the wealthy, snobby designer. Estella sheds her good girl image and fully becomes Cruella, who she turned into as a child to combat bullies, and launches a counter-fashion offensive against the Baroness, making a name for herself in the world of couture and bringing down the Baroness's brand, leading to the two women coming to blows that could very well end tragically for both of them.
"Cruella" is a fascinating film that stands on its own merit, but Disney obviously had to add in certain aspects (Dalmatians, precisely, even if they're hardly used in the film, and even though Cruella doesn't really hate them) to connect her to the "101 Dalmatians" film. Apart from small nods to the classic, this looks and feels like "The Devil Wears Prada" set in London in the 60s and 70s. Meryl Streep and Anne Hathaway are swapped for the two Emmas: Thompson and Stone respectively, both Oscar-winning actresses who both deliver deliciously delectable diabolical performances, and this is one of the great parts about the film.
Emma Stone plays Cruella with a sinister sneer, but with a valid reason for her depravity. She blames the Baroness for her mother's death, and sets out to make her life a living...Hell...Man (get it?) by serving as the bad girl of fashion, bringing down the elegant empire the Baroness spent decades building. She's intelligent, confident, and always one step ahead of everyone else, and has a take-no-prisoners attitude that makes her more endearing than evil, a true antihero that's easily rootable even though she's still a bad guy, but not necessarily a bad guy.
That bad guy role goes to the other Emma - Emma Thompson - who also relishes in her Miranda Priestly-like demeanor as she rules her fashion empire with an iron-gloved fist. She never shows emotion and is constantly the smartest woman in the room, ahead of her competition and belittling anyone and everyone around her - even Stone's Estella, whom she has a fondness for. She is always the most fashion forward, and can kill you with a simple glare or scoff, disarming you in an instant. To say she's intimidating is an insult to the word, as she far exceeds that. Seeing these two femme fatales going at it in the second half of the film is what makes it such a delicious treat - too bad you have to go through the padded first half to see that happen.
"Cruella" is hindered greatly by its choppy storytelling, where it seems that the writers first came up with an original idea but Disney decided to shoehorn in an origin story that no one asked for. We see Estella/Cruella as a child and dealing with the death of her mother as she becomes a nomad thief living in the streets of London, and suddenly its twenty minutes into the film when we finally get to see Stone on screen. Even then there's a large amount of time devoted to her desire to be a designer and her daily thieving activities with her friends (Joel Fry plays Jasper as a more intelligent individual, while Paul Walter Hauser steals the show as the lovable fool Horace). Then there's an elongated moment when she gets the job at the department store and we still just wish something interesting would happen. When Cruella and the Baroness finally come to blows, it turns into an enticing pas de deux of two titans, one trying to upstart the other but clearly Cruella wins every round with her showmanship that totally upstages anything the Baroness offers.
To take away from the weak script, "Cruella" excels in its visual aids, transporting us to an alternate-dimension London filled with off-grey visuals by production designer Fiona Crombie, fantastical art direction by Martin Foley, and especially rich, elegant costume designs by famed designer Jenny Beavan (who won two Oscars for her designs for 1986's "Room With a View" and 2015's "Mad Max: Fury Road"). Foley turns Cruella's headquarters into a lavish plotting room, and transforms the Baroness's castle into an exquisite entity all its own. Jenny Beavan will easily earn another Academy Award nomination here, as her masterful work is showcased in extreme fashion, having created 277 costumes for the cast, and 47 specifically for Stone, and each one is a visionary delight akin to a master chef's richly designed dinner palate. It's a stunning spectacle to view, even if its basically window dressing.
Showcasing ethereal fashion and production design - as well as the tour-de-force performance by the two Emma's - "Cruella" is a visionary spectacle even if the story is a bit shoehorned into telling an off-balanced origin story of one of Disney's most vile villains.
The Score: A
Years after her mother dies and leaves her an orphan, Estella Miller (Emma Stone) lives a grifting life with her friends Jasper (Joel Fry) and Horace (Paul Walter Hauser), while she desires to be a fashion designer in her own right. She gets a low-level job at a the Liberty department store, but her talent goes unnoticed. In a fit of anger and drunkenness, she vandalizes the store's window design and makes it into her own creation. This is the same day that Baroness von Hellman (Emma Thompson) arrives, and she falls in love with the design, bringing Estella over to work with her.
Estella is at first overjoyed to work for the famed fashion designer, but she soon realizes that the Baroness isn't a nice woman, and there's connections to her past that leads Estella to seek vengeance on the wealthy, snobby designer. Estella sheds her good girl image and fully becomes Cruella, who she turned into as a child to combat bullies, and launches a counter-fashion offensive against the Baroness, making a name for herself in the world of couture and bringing down the Baroness's brand, leading to the two women coming to blows that could very well end tragically for both of them.
"Cruella" is a fascinating film that stands on its own merit, but Disney obviously had to add in certain aspects (Dalmatians, precisely, even if they're hardly used in the film, and even though Cruella doesn't really hate them) to connect her to the "101 Dalmatians" film. Apart from small nods to the classic, this looks and feels like "The Devil Wears Prada" set in London in the 60s and 70s. Meryl Streep and Anne Hathaway are swapped for the two Emmas: Thompson and Stone respectively, both Oscar-winning actresses who both deliver deliciously delectable diabolical performances, and this is one of the great parts about the film.
Emma Stone plays Cruella with a sinister sneer, but with a valid reason for her depravity. She blames the Baroness for her mother's death, and sets out to make her life a living...Hell...Man (get it?) by serving as the bad girl of fashion, bringing down the elegant empire the Baroness spent decades building. She's intelligent, confident, and always one step ahead of everyone else, and has a take-no-prisoners attitude that makes her more endearing than evil, a true antihero that's easily rootable even though she's still a bad guy, but not necessarily a bad guy.
That bad guy role goes to the other Emma - Emma Thompson - who also relishes in her Miranda Priestly-like demeanor as she rules her fashion empire with an iron-gloved fist. She never shows emotion and is constantly the smartest woman in the room, ahead of her competition and belittling anyone and everyone around her - even Stone's Estella, whom she has a fondness for. She is always the most fashion forward, and can kill you with a simple glare or scoff, disarming you in an instant. To say she's intimidating is an insult to the word, as she far exceeds that. Seeing these two femme fatales going at it in the second half of the film is what makes it such a delicious treat - too bad you have to go through the padded first half to see that happen.
"Cruella" is hindered greatly by its choppy storytelling, where it seems that the writers first came up with an original idea but Disney decided to shoehorn in an origin story that no one asked for. We see Estella/Cruella as a child and dealing with the death of her mother as she becomes a nomad thief living in the streets of London, and suddenly its twenty minutes into the film when we finally get to see Stone on screen. Even then there's a large amount of time devoted to her desire to be a designer and her daily thieving activities with her friends (Joel Fry plays Jasper as a more intelligent individual, while Paul Walter Hauser steals the show as the lovable fool Horace). Then there's an elongated moment when she gets the job at the department store and we still just wish something interesting would happen. When Cruella and the Baroness finally come to blows, it turns into an enticing pas de deux of two titans, one trying to upstart the other but clearly Cruella wins every round with her showmanship that totally upstages anything the Baroness offers.
To take away from the weak script, "Cruella" excels in its visual aids, transporting us to an alternate-dimension London filled with off-grey visuals by production designer Fiona Crombie, fantastical art direction by Martin Foley, and especially rich, elegant costume designs by famed designer Jenny Beavan (who won two Oscars for her designs for 1986's "Room With a View" and 2015's "Mad Max: Fury Road"). Foley turns Cruella's headquarters into a lavish plotting room, and transforms the Baroness's castle into an exquisite entity all its own. Jenny Beavan will easily earn another Academy Award nomination here, as her masterful work is showcased in extreme fashion, having created 277 costumes for the cast, and 47 specifically for Stone, and each one is a visionary delight akin to a master chef's richly designed dinner palate. It's a stunning spectacle to view, even if its basically window dressing.
Showcasing ethereal fashion and production design - as well as the tour-de-force performance by the two Emma's - "Cruella" is a visionary spectacle even if the story is a bit shoehorned into telling an off-balanced origin story of one of Disney's most vile villains.
The Score: A
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