Summary
On some level, Disney’s CRUELLA attempts to do the seemingly impossible. If Maleficent was Disney’s live action redemption of Sleeping Beauty‘s villain, then this film must convince audiences to side with animated history’s most famous puppy skinner. Yet somehow it mostly works, as high camp and haute couture collide in a punk tribute Disney’s rogues gallery.
As a child, scrappy young genius Estella witnesses the death of her mother at a fancy gala ball in th 1960s. Forced to grow up as a grifter on the streets of London, the adult Estella (Emma Stone) still dreams of entering the world of high fashion. She gets her chance when her de facto family Jasper (Joel Fry) and Horace (Paul Walter Hauser) secure her a job at the Liberty department store. Spotted by fashion diva the Baroness (Emma Thompson), Estella is soon working her dream gig. Yet her darker side reemerges in the form of Cruella, a figure intent on disrupting the 1970s fashion world and enacting revenge for her mother’s death.
While it arrives on a wave of Disney’s live action remakes, CRUELLA is not the first time that 101 Dalmatians has made the transition from its animated roots. The 1996 remake starring Glenn Close (and its 2000 sequel) already has its own legion of fans amongst 90s kids as an update to the 1967 original. To director Craig Gillespie’s (I, Tonya) credit, the 2021 edition doesn’t even attempt to retread this well-worn ground. In its place is something that could best be described as the intersection of the devil wearing prada, a fashion biopic and a heist film.
This approach ensures that the tone swings wildly, landing somewhere south of full-on art punk but definitely north of kid friendly. This is, after all, a film that involves parental death, repeated murder plots, and the continued inference of dogs (albeit vicious ones) being used as winter wear. Like Maleficent, the stories of Cruella’s cruelty are revealed to be greatly exaggerated. Following a particularly spectacular fashion show (set to — what else? — a cover of The Stooges’ ‘I Wanna Be Your Dog’), Cruella quips “People do need a villain to believe in.”
In fact, it’s this dichotomy that largely separates this from the pack, and is the way Gillespie and company get away with making Cruella the anti-hero. As wonderfully unhinged as Stone is in her dual personas, it takes someone even more batshit (Thompson dialled up to eleven) to make Cruella a sympathetic character. Fry and Hauser are fun as the bumbling sidekicks, although Mark Strong and Kirby Howell-Baptiste in supporting roles occasionally feel like wasted opportunities.
Where CRUELLA works best is as a visually spectacle. Employing practically every song from the broad era — seriously, it’s Bee Gees, The Doors, Nina Simone, Ike & Tina Turner, ELO, Queen, Blondie, The Clash and more in short order — it all collides with the Vivienne Westwood-esque designs (by way of Mad Max: Fury Road thanks to costume designer Jenny Beavan) to make something aesthetically unique to the Disney canon.
As a lead-in to 101 Dalmatians, which the mid-credits sequence kind of implies, this may ultimately be a jarring experience. It may not be strictly for kids, but constant narrative check-ins, animal sidekicks and over-explanations never let us forget that there’s a broad demographic in mind. CRUELLA is ambitious, and if it falls short of greatness it’s only due to it being uncertain about its own audience. There’s plenty of fun to be had here. To paraphrase the titular lead, it’s born brilliant, born bad — and it’s a little bit mad.
2021 | USA | DIRECTOR: Craig Gillespie | WRITERS: Dana Fox, Tony McNamara | CAST: Emma Stone, Emma Thompson, Joel Fry, Paul Walter Hauser, Emily Beecham, Kirby Howell-Baptiste, Mark Strong | DISTRIBUTOR: Disney/Disney+ | RUNNING TIME: 134 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 26 May 2021 (AUS), 27 May 2021 (Disney+)
