It’s hard for me to really get into live action remakes from Disney as of late, because of how little the effort has been lately in making them. Most of them are pretty copy and paste, making them feel like hollowed out shells of their former selves, and continuously doing it because they can make money just based on the title alone. It’s kind of the reason I literally had the lowest of expectations when I went to go see Cruella. Was I right for thinking that going in? Well let's dive in shall we?
First of all, the costumes were fantastic. Jenny Beaven, who was the designer of Mad Max: Fury Road, did a fantastic job with all of the designs in this movie. You really got the 1960s-1970s feel that they were going for in these costume designs, and it really helps the film stand out.
Emma Stone actually does a really good job as Cruella in this film. There was so much passion in this performance you really felt like she was having fun in this role and she was really doing her own thing. Just like Glenn Close kinda did in the 1996 version, which makes sense because she was an executive producer for this film as shown in the credits.
Emma Thompson’s role as The Baroness was absolutely amazing. It really reminded me of Hela from Thor: Ragnarok actually, if Hela had all of her powers stripped from her and decided to become a fashion designer in the 1970s. She was condescending, shrewd, extremely perceptive and honestly pretty funny at times. It’s one of the best villains Disney has created since probably the Shadow Man from Princess and the Frog.
Jasper and Horace were alright in this movie. Horace is just kind of your typical comedic relief, Jasper has more of a deeper role in this film. He was the typical “Try not to lose your way” supporting character that you’ve seen so many times, which annoyed me a little bit because that’s when it started setting in that they were going to go the Maleficent route where she isn’t going to be this over the top monster that I really wanted her to become. Joel Fry does put a lot of passion in this performance though, so it does feel as if he’s trying to look out for a little sister. So for what they were going for it was well executed.
Soundtrack itself was really good but sometimes it felt a tad over reliant in terms of evoking emotion. Most of the songs on the soundtrack were songs from that era, like "Sympathy for the Devil", "Time of the Season", "Feeling Good". There were at least 15 maybe 20 songs that played throughout the whole film. As catchy as they are, most of the songs were used to try to and tell you how to really feel in this current situation as opposed to letting the movie itself doing it for you.
All in All, I actually recommend watching this movie. Even though it could've been a little darker for my taste, I actually got the feeling that they actually tried putting together a really fun origin story in this film. And I give them a lot of credit for not sticking to the status quo for Disney films, and it's a major improvement from this trend Disney has been doing for the last 7 years. Even though it's not complete perfection, it's well designed enough to keep you entertained. Final Verdict: 7.5 out of 10
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