Cruella

Ten Second Review: There are certainly worse ways to spend an evening than Cruella, but that’s about the nicest I can be.

What happens when Disney try to make a Joker style origin story for a classic villain served with a heavy dose of Suicide Squad? Well, this I guess.

Settle in because it’s going to be a rant, or rather a collection of mini rants that I promise will be tied together at the end. Also there is spoilers, consider this your warning.

To begin, a personal note. 

I hate that films just ignore the landscape of the city they are in. I’m sure it annoys people in other cities too like New York and Vancouver. For instance seeing Sacks Fifth Avenue pop up at several points in a chase in The Dark Knight’s Gotham. Either make the city fictitious, or make the locations fictitious. 

Key to this film is Cruella’s relationship to Regent’s Park, and from the outset the film does what films so often do in London. They cross the Thames heading south and still end up in central London, more often than not (as done here), at Buckingham Palace. Then, round the corner, Regent’s Park (now the size of a small square) appears like magic. They go to great lengths to emphasise that this is not Greenwich (when it clearly is) and you have to wonder why. Situated close to an old garment district filled with houses and old studios like the one she lives in, would having her have a deep connection with Greenwich be so bad? It has plenty of name recognition due to the meridian line, this even gives the film the opportunity for cheesy lines about it being “her time now”.

Stunted Growth

I suppose one reason Cruella can’t have an “it’s my time now” moment is that she lacks any real character development. When we meet her as a child, she’s a sharp tongued, tenacious genius with dreams of being a designer. This doesn’t change at all. She starts as a villain and just gets more villain-y with a more ludicrous accent and more leatherette.

It doesn’t help that she feels, from the outset, like she’s playing at being a villain but lacks the drive we as an audience would expect to see grow within her. What a Disney villain sincerely needs is menace; I need to feel they will do anything for their goal and when they threaten someone, I need to believe they mean it. When Scar threatens to kill Simba, I know he will because he killed Mufasa. When Cruella hints at skinning dogs for a garment, I don’t for a second think she would. This leads neatly into another element of Cruella, the character’s, downfall.

A Tale of Two Emma’s

Emma Stone has to play against Emma Thompson and while Stone has a lot more work to do, Thompson has much more scope to play an eccentric villainous British caricature. Thompson also doesn’t have to go on a heroes' journey for us to understand her motivation, it’s clear; she is the top dog designer and she has to protect her spot. This means Thompson can deliver sharp lines flawlessly while Stone is saddled with trying to retort on the back foot while trying to build a character. 

Thompson actually manages to encapsulate the menace that Stone lacks. When Cruella accuses her of murder she rather classily and menacingly asks for the field to be narrowed so she can know if it was indeed a murder she did commit. 

You have to feel for Stone here as she really fights an uphill battle against her skill set, her own accent, her task and cinematic counter-play. It almost feels as though the best she could do was an impression of Thompson’s character because that was the Cruella we would all rather watch.

The Hair

The third act sees the incredibly shocking twist that Cruella’s nemesis is actually her biological mother! *feigns suitably over-dramatic surprise* What might have helped is for us to understand their link beyond sharp tongued barbs and skill for clothing design.

You get the feeling from Thompson’s costumes (namely her head wraps) that we were set to get a hair reveal showing the pair’s clear biological link. I’m not sure if they chickened out or in screen tests Thompson just didn’t suit the bold monochrome look, but either way it was a disappointment and speaks to the wider lack of risk the movie took.

It was almost as though this comic-book-feel film thought that that might be a step too far into the ridiculous, and considering some of the hair they do give Thompson toward the end, I can’t see why.

This does seem to be a trend throughout. The film likes the illusion of a bold choice, but never actually takes a risk. We never see something that we haven’t seen before. The flame dress from films like The Hunger Games, the fashion of Westwood and McQueen, the palette of Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock films, the barbs or Miranda Priestly; it all feels recycled. 

The Greatest Shame

Most of all I detest that there are so many moments in this film where there were glimmers of real character and they were stamped on. The saddest thing to watch is that there are clearly people working on this film that had a love and care for detail. A perfect example of this is early in the film when Cruella is pulling a job and she looks over to see a billboard and dreams of being a designer. In the corner of the room a TV is playing a scene featuring Talulah Bankhead. As she was the inspiration for the original cartoon Cruella, this is a wonderful and delicate nod to who this characters will become and it didn’t feel like something you’d expect a Disney production to do.

There are lots of moments peppered throughout that highlight the creativity and love of the people who crafted this film, it’s just so sad that they were not then let wild on the whole film. The camera work was actually quite interesting, and again didn’t feel like what I would associate with a Disney film, but it’s hard to believe that the person that would have shot it would also pick the pedestrian pop culture music they did to go with it a la Suicide Squad. The vision isn’t unified and it feels like creatives and execs going in to battle and the loser being an unwitting audience.

I am getting ever more tired of big budget films thinking that if you press enough of the right buttons your film is a sure fire hit. I’m tired or hearing famous pop music and being told, “you like that, so you must like this too”. I imagine, as we have seen before, it will work and audiences will feel as though they enjoy it. The defence when questioned will undoubtedly be, “it’s just a bit of fun” or “it doesn’t have to be taken seriously”, but it does mark a continued trend in the illusion of enjoyment. Sure, there’s an argument that says “if you liked it you liked it so what’s the difference?”, but there undoubtedly is a difference. Seeing something new (even in the confines of a reimagining or reboot) is a separate pleasure to enjoying what you already know. Hearing a song that’s about to become one of your new favourites is a different sensation to listening to a classic. It’s an excitement that manifests in a distinct way. 

I’m very happy to watch films that don’t do anything new, but do what they do well. I’m very happy to watch films that are trying something new and pushing boundaries, even if I don’t love the result. I refuse to be happy with being told what I’m watching is bold and new when it’s just recycling instead of allowing it’s clearly creative team do their job to the best of their abilities and execute a fresh vision.