The Doctor’s Diagnosis: B
I’m late to see Cruella primarily because I had no intention of seeing it, but nothing else came out this past week and here I am. However, I’m actually happy that I did catch it in a theater. I have major problems with this film, mainly with the opening and the final act, but I still enjoyed it far more than I expected. When Cruella is good, it is really, really, almost shockingly good. There were moments when I was stunned by how much I was enjoying this film, but then it came crashing down with one of the most ill-advised final acts that I’ve seen in quite a while.
Despite Emma Stone’s recent comments to the contrary, Cruella is basically Disney’s version of Joker and serves as an origin story of one of their most popular villains (in terms of tickets sold, the original 101 Dalmatians is the 12th biggest movie of all time and the 2nd biggest animated movie of all time, behind only Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs). It reveals that her real name is the less obviously evil Estella and begins with her as a kid that witnesses the death of her mother after she is kicked out of school for being a bit crazy. She flees to London where she meets two orphaned kids living on their own and getting by on petty theft and they form something of a family of child grifters. Flash forward to the 1960s and Estella is now played by Emma Stone, still living with her brothers-in-crime (now played by Joel Fry and Paul Walter Hauser) and now obsessed with fashion. She lies her way into a career working for a fashion mogul named The Baroness (played by Emma Thompson) and grows to hate her employer. The character then gradually (and not so gradually, but I’ll get to that) descends into madness as she transforms into Cruella. So, yeah, it is a Disney version of Joker and even seems to invite this comparison by including the song Smile, albeit the Judy Garland version. It also includes a homage to an iconic shot of Joker from The Dark Knight, so the filmmakers seem to be fully aware of what they are doing.
Positives first because there was a long stretch when I loved this movie. The middle 90 minutes or so of Cruella are far better than a Disney origin story has any right to be. Once the film switches to Emma Stone, it fires on all cylinders from the performances to the tone to the cinematography (which includes some really impressive tracking shots). I was entertained as hell by the story of Cruella’s rise to prominence and the film is genuinely funny when it is supposed to be and surprisingly dark when it needs to be. It does not feel like a modern Disney movie. It feels far more genuine and adventurous than that.
I don’t often discuss music, but the soundtrack here is amazing and adds an entirely new dimension to the film. Maybe I’ve just become too accustomed to movies with nothing but auto-tuned pop rap, but holy shit is this soundtrack amazing. It has Electric Light Orchestra, Blondie, Black Sabbath, The Rolling Stones, The Zombies, Nancy Sinatra, Queen, David Bowie, the list goes on and on. And the music is integrated masterfully into the film, augmenting and highlighting what is going on more effectively than any other movie soundtrack I’ve seen in recent memory. Worthy of special mention, there is an awesome sequence of Cruella making an entrance while a band plays I Wanna Be Your Dog by Iggy & The Stooges. This was my favorite scene in the film and made me think that this couldn’t be a Disney production; it’s just too damn cool for that.
The performances are all excellent. Emma Stone’s performance is triumphant (I don’t know exactly what that means, but calling a performance “triumphant” seems to be the best way to get quotes on a poster). She bounces back and forth from a sympathetic and cool chick that I would hang out with to a raging psychopath with ease. My only criticism of the middle portion of the film is that she switches from Estella to Cruella pretty damn suddenly, but that’s more of a script issue than a performance issue. Emma Thompson is triumphant as the uber-bitch villain, and Joel Fry and Paul Walter Hauser as Jasper and Horace? You bet your sweet ass that their performances are triumphant. The interpretation of Casper and Horace is actually one of the more interesting elements of the film. These characters are nothing but bumbling burglars in other iterations (I always thought that they were the inspiration for Harry and Marv in Home Alone, which is probably accurate because John Hughes wrote both Home Alone and the 1996 101 Dalmatians and the similarities are glaring). In this version, though, they are given far greater depth and the relationship between them and Cruella is both endearing and sad, with a reluctant family dynamic. These guys are funny and sympathetic here, transforming one-note characters into oddly real people.
Sounds like I love this movie, right? Well, the opening and ending are fucking garbage. The first 20 or so minutes, with Cruella as a child, should have been edited down to about 5 minutes. The film throws every Problem Child-esque cliché that it can at the screenand I lost my patience quickly. This is not the fault of the child actress, who is very good, but a script that goes on for far too long rather than simply presenting the critical information and moving on to the meat of the story.
Then there is the last act. Good lord…..I have never gone from “this is great!” to “fuck this movie” so quickly. I’m not going into spoilers, but there is an awful, completely unnecessary twist that damn near ruined the film for me and set up a final act that should have been edited out entirely. It is infuriating. I was sitting in the theater thinking “no, no, please don’t do this, no, please stop.” But the movie did not hear my cries. The movie did not care. The movie proceeded to just kick me in the nuts and mock how close I was to seeing a genuinely great Disney movie.
This is a tough one to grade because Cruella is a frustrating experience. When it’s good, it is really good. But then it takes the kind of turn that’s usually reserved for a shitty sequel that ruins the first movie. I do recommend seeing it, but more so recommend watching it and turning it off right after the aforementioned scene with the Iggy & The Stooges performance. I don’t care that there is a half hour left. Just turn it off and go blissfully into the night, my friends.
Image By: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cruella_(film)#/media/File:Cruella_2021_film_poster.jpg
