Rating: PG-13
Runtime: 2 hours, 14 minutes
Director: Craig Gillespie
Quick Impressions:
I didn’t even plan to write about Cruella because the idea of Emma Stone playing Cruella de Vil (or DeVil, if you prefer) sounded so enticing that I was sure the film would disappoint me. But if how much my twelve-year-old laughed at this movie is any indicator, then Cruella should be a massive hit with people her age. (I would have enjoyed watching it without her, too. Frankly, it’s just really funny. Dark, but funny.) This is like The Devil Wears Prada meets The Count of Monte Cristo. You could also think of it as The Favourite for children. (If you’re having trouble imagining how that could exist, you’ll have to watch Cruella.)
I think teenagers will love it. Even though it’s an origin story for one specific character—classic Disney villain Cruella de Vil—from an emotional point of view, it could be an origin story for anyone. In fact, How It Feels to Be a Teenager would be a good alternative title. I know I would have liked this movie when I was in high school, and so would most of my friends. It has everything—comedy, murder, fashion, revenge! When I was a teen, all of my friends who loved fashion were also really into the idea of having enemies. So I think this movie would have been a huge hit with my peers. (They’re all in their 40s now but would probably still like it.)
I don’t know why I thought I wouldn’t like Cruella. My family loved the movie I, Tonya (which some might also consider an origin story from a classic villain’s point of view), and Cruella shares a director, editor, and co-star (Paul Walter Hauser) with that film. The editor is Tatiana Riegel, a fact my husband must have mentioned seventy-thousand times in the days leading up to the movie’s release. He’s a huge, huge fan of Critical Role, so he was quite excited that the editor was Sam Riegel’s sister (who was nominated for an Oscar for I, Tonya).
I completely intended to use this evening to finish writing up my thoughts on Gandhi (the most recent Best Picture winner my daughter and I watched as part of our now never-ending “summer project.” I have a lot to say about that film!) But Cruella made us all laugh so much and left us in such a good mood that I decided to write about it immediately.
The Good:
I usually like these live action Disney movies, but part of their charm is that during the slow scenes, I can zone out, eat popcorn, and imagine I’m in Disneyland. (Don’t think, “What’s the point of this scene?” Think, “I’m eating a churro standing in line for Pirates of the Caribbean.”)
But you don’t have to do that with Cruella. It’s a cut above most recent live action Disney releases. My daughter called it, “the best Disney movie I’ve seen in a while.” I’ll add, “In a long while.” We also liked Raya and the Last Dragon earlier this year, but I didn’t have time to write about that one. Raya is an excellent film with gorgeous animation, a strong voice cast, and a solid message. (And it offers a kind of revenge, too, if, like me, you get a vicarious thrill from seeing Kelly Marie Tran succeed after the awful way some Star Wars fans treated her.) But Cruella is funnier. Much funnier. I think it’s the funniest movie I’ve seen all year. (But I’ll level with you, I’ve been distracted all week, and I can’t remember any of the other films I’ve seen this year.)
My daughter was hooked from the opening flashback, and Emma Stone’s narration is pretty exceptional (especially for one of these live action spin-offs). Elements of the plot also highly fed into my daughter’s ongoing fury about kids at school making fun of her hair every time she decides to wear it short (which is the way she prefers it). But anybody who has ever decided to stand out by choice because they’re already standing out by accident (and that’s probably a lot of teens and tweens) should find plenty to love about young Estella (later to be Cruella). (And you know, now that I think of her name again, I’m not so sure there isn’t a little bit of Great Expectations in here, too, along with The Count of Monte Cristo. This is kind of like catching up on your high school reading list during a fashion show.)
Not surprisingly, given the plot and themes, the movie features lots of eye-catching fashion. As we watched, my daughter observed, “This movie needs an award for costume design! Everything she’s worn is amazing, and then it just progressively gets better and better.” Now, take that with a grain of salt because she’s not that interested in fashion. But, at the same time, she’s not that interested in fashion. And she did take notice of the fashion here.
Meanwhile, I was paying no attention to the fashion at all—except for that dress that gets locked in the vault. I loved that dress. It was positively Elizabethan, maybe even Jacobean, in its design. (That’s a pun! It’s not just eye-catching; it’s calculating. It’s a very evil dress.)
What I was thinking is, “This soundtrack really helps the forward momentum of the story. These scenes never lose energy because the moments with less dialogue borrow energy from the music.” Editing choices probably help that, too. Even if this is on the long side for a movie about Cruella de Vil (and it is!), the movie has great pacing and sustained energy that make it consistently fun to watch.
If you’re like us, you’ll get hooked right away because 1) Emma Stone’s narration adds so much humor to what we see, and 2) From the jump, the stakes get so high. Watching, I winced and thought, “They wouldn’t do that, would they?” (But then I reasoned, “Of course, they would! It’s a Disney movie! What Disney movie doesn’t do that?”) Still this is live action, so it’s a bold move. (But then, of course, you have to think, “How in the world do you make a villain who plots to kill Dalmatian puppies sympathetic?” So for something so consistently amusing, the movie starts with very high emotional stakes. You think, “Well, these stakes couldn’t get any higher!” And then they keep getting higher and higher through an unlikely series of events that reminded me a lot of the Star Wars novel Bloodline by Claudia Gray.) Even the idea of retelling the plot of this movie to a friend makes me smile. There’s so much drama at every turn. (Then, as my daughter noted, at one point, it basically turns into Supergirl which was her favorite show for a long time and still has a special place in her heart.)
(I just looked to see who wrote the film—in case it was Claudia Gray—and it turns out that one of the writers is Tony McNamara who wrote The Favourite! So you see? No wonder it reminds me of The Favourite!)
The acting is superb, better than you would expect (or demand) (or even ask) from this kind of film. Emma Stone is unusually adept at playing comedy and drama simultaneously. (I’ve found her quite funny since Easy A when that running joke about “Pocketful of Sunshine” evolving into her ringtone cracked me up so much that I’ve loved her ever since.) (I realize that she didn’t write the joke, but she’s still benefitted from my goodwill.) (Well, I don’t know that she’s benefitted, but I have by watching and enjoying all her movies.) She’s the perfect young Cruella de Vil (especially when you consider the way both Glenn Close and Betty Lou Gerson have played Cruella in the past. Stone matches their over-the-top diva villain theatrics but adds a bit of heart and perhaps more than a bit of trauma response behavior).
Honestly, Stone could carry the movie all by herself. It’s so funny as written, and she delivers her lines so well, that it doesn’t really matter what anyone else is doing. They could all be terrible, and I would continue watching just for Emma Stone.
But what makes the movie even better is that the rest of the cast is good, too, particularly Emma Thompson as The Baroness. I’ve always liked Thompson, too. (When you’re a writer who loves Shakespeare and Jane Austen, how could you not like Emma Thompson?) But this is the best part I’ve seen her in for a while. She does so much with this role. Basically, she’s playing Meryl Streep in The Devil Wears Prada but taking the character to almost parodic levels of hilarity. If you’re saying, “Isn’t Meryl Streep already being pretty funny in The Devil Wears Prada,” yes, she is. But Emma Thompson is being even funnier. And, at the same time, she’s also being evil! (Miranda Priestly is complicated, not evil. The Baroness is everything Miranda Priestly is, and she’s also evil. She’s so evil. Just when you think she might not be so evil after all, she doubles down and gets even more evil! It’s great!)
Also pretty fantastic is Paul Walter Hauser (a really talented actor who never gets enough recognition). He’s Horace, and Joel Fry (from Game of Thrones) is Jasper. They’re quite likeable as the pair, especially because Fry is basically playing Andy’s boyfriend in The Devil Wears Prada if he wasn’t so selfish and career sabotaging.
Good, too, is John McCrea in a small but crucial role. (I wish we got to see more of him, and that we saw greater complexity from his character, but I guarantee you, he’ll be a lot of people’s favorite. My daughter thought he was fantastic.) Mark Strong also gets a small but important part. (He gets one of the best lines, I think, late in the film, subtle but so insulting. It made me laugh.)
From start to finish, this is an unusually well-paced live action Disney adaptation. It may have its tiny flaws, but it’s so funny that if you’re like me, you won’t care. It also has tons of atmosphere and fits right in with all the more serious movies about the 1960s and 70s that have been in theaters (or not) lately. Plus, it makes London seem very magical, so if you’ve recently started looking for an alternative to Harry Potter, this just might be the movie for you.
It’s also very fun to anticipate certain lines and moments. Sometimes, it’s bad when a movie is predictable. But in this case, I felt very satisfied when I could wow my daughter (who is twelve) by predicting the sixth stage of grief. And we all guessed a large part of the ending (and then were quite satisfied when it happened).
Best Scene:
I personally loved the moment when Emma Thompson walks out to greet her party guests near the end. It’s well played by the actress and the character. But it’s actually surprisingly intense. Imagine if what you viewed as your greatest mistake were suddenly everywhere, in the place where you usually feel safe, and now it’s all you can see, staring at you. How horrifying! What a nightmare!
Best Action Sequence:
All of us loved the scene in the vault that slowly transitions into what I am personally hoping will become the new theme for a late night street party at a Disney park in the near future. (Remember the Mad T Party or ElecTRONica? I always like those types of things because people congregate there, and then I can wander through them quickly on the way to lines that don’t have as many people in them. So I get a taste of the theming and sometimes back-to-back rides on something really good, too.)
Best Scene Visually:
My daughter loved the scene when Cruella first makes a dramatic entrance at the party. What a dress! My husband also noted that Stone looks just like the animated Cruella when driving her car. There’s nothing bad about the movie visually. Every scene looks good. The book-ended moments behind the mansion near the beginning and end of the film are certainly eye-catching.
The Negatives:
This movie is too long.
I feel like I could have watched the original 101 Dalmatians twice, then watched both Glenn Close movies, then read the book, and then come back to the TV to find Cruella still on! Now granted, there are no pacing issues, and every scene is full of energy. Plus there’s constant forward momentum. And the film is always either funny or horrifying (usually both). But for a movie about Cruella de Vil, it’s awfully long. It’s almost as long as Gandhi. That doesn’t seem right. I don’t think Cruella de Vil and Gandhi deserve equal time.
Now to be fair, I haven’t gotten anything done all week, and my mind is a teeming to-do list of stuff I hoped to accomplish after this movie and before bed. So it might be just me bothered by the runtime.
But two-hours and fourteen minutes devoted to the backstory of Cruella de Vil? Doesn’t that seem like a lot?
Initially I was resistant to this film because I heard Glenn Close say recently that she hoped to play Cruella DeVil again. (It’s spelled DeVil when Close plays her.) I really like Glenn Close. I appreciate her mental health advocacy, and I respect her attempts to make movies that warn of the dangers of cults to counteract any damages she did when she was young and in a cult and participated in plays designed to recruit people. (She’s doing a good job there, too. I remember the general disdain for Frank Oz’s Stepford Wives remake, and how people implied that it had no point and no reason to exist. But I saw it when it came out, and the message of, “Don’t let someone isolate you and trick you into joining a cult,” came through loud and clear to me. In fact, that was my one big takeaway from that film, so well done, Glenn Close!)
Anyway, as it turns out Close is one of the executive producers of this film, so there’s no reason not to watch it on her account. (Perhaps the fact that Estella/Cruella seems to be having mental health issues in response to trauma is even due to Close’s influence. I don’t know.)
The only other negative thing to note about Cruella is that it has a very stressful final act. If you’re like my daughter (and me, actually) and get stressed out by interpersonal conflict and relationships that can’t possibly work out, then this movie may stress you out for a good long while. But, to counterbalance this, I must stress again that Cruella is really, really funny. I never dreamed one of these live action Disney spin-offs would be so funny. I’m still shocked.
Overall:
My two favorite movies of 2018 were the The Favourite and Won’t You Be My Neighbor?. I kept going back and forth, conflicted over which I liked more. This movie contains elements of both.
Well, not really. Actually, it’s just a marginally less awful version of The Favourite that children can safely watch (though it is rated PG-13, but mainly for the intensity of its themes).
I was surprised by how much I liked Cruella. You might like it, too. It’s funny; I can promise you that!