This is not your grandparents’ Cruella De Vil.
Actually, I’m not sure whose Cruella it is.
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| Horace (Paul Walter Hauser, left) and Jasper (Joel Fry) recognize that their equally larcenous partner, Estella (Emma Store), also has the talent to become a famous fashion designer ... but the chances of that actually happening seem quite remote. |
Which therefore begs the usual question: Why employ a well-known pop-culture character at all, if there’s no willingness to honor its roots? Why not simply create a fresh character, and start a new franchise?
On top of which, why update a beloved and still-popular children’s story, when the resulting new film is aimed more toward adults, and is likely to bore younger viewers?
Hollywood never ceases to bewilder.
All this said, Cruella is entertaining — to a point — thanks in great part to Emma Stone’s flamboyant, scenery-chewing performance as the title character. She’s ably supported by the hilariously kitschy efforts of production designer Fiona Crombie and costume designer Jenny Beavan (along with “eyewear designer” Tom Davies, who, quite deservedly, gets his own separate credit).
Gillespie and editor Tatiana S. Riegel romp through all these sets and locations with the giddiness of children on a particularly lavish theme park ride: all manner of extended takes, smash close-ups, cockeyed camera angles — cinematographer Nicolas Karakatsanis also deserves a bow — and other visual tics and hiccups.
No question: Cruella is fun to watch.
For about an hour. Giddiness, for its own sake, isn’t sustainable.
At 134 minutes, Gillespie’s self-indulgent film is at least half an hour too long. The momentum begins to wane as we hit the midpoint, and thereafter it’s definitely a case of diminishing returns. The second half never induces outright boredom, but the thin plot does get tedious.
Cruella narrates her own saga — Stone’s off-camera voiceover — which begins with a rebellious, erratic childhood that matches her alarmingly unusual hair color. Dad is long gone; her mother Catherine (Emily Beecham) is at wit’s end, trying to deal with her unruly daughter (named Estella at this point, and played by Tipper Seifert-Cleveland).
After the school demerits hit critical level — a very droll montage — Estella finally perceives how her behavior is traumatizing her mother.
Eager to embrace a promised new beginning, mother and daughter hit the road … but first Catherine stops at an impossibly posh and massive estate, to meet with somebody inside. Disobeying the order to remain in the car, Estella sneaks around the lavish garden and is just in time to witness a disastrous encounter between her mother and three savage Dalmatians.
(Done tastefully, despite the horrific result, which is necessary to advance the plot.)
Suddenly orphaned, Estella soon falls in with street kids Horace (Joseph MacDonald) and Jasper (Ziggy Gardner), keeping themselves alive as thieves and pickpockets. She proves a good addition to their team, initially as distraction, but the boys quickly realize that she’s way ahead of them in savvy, smarts and planning.
Estella also has a flair for the identity-obscuring costumes that camouflage their illicit activities.
Flash-forward a decade and change. Estella (now Stone), Jasper (Joel Fry) and Horace (Paul Walter Hauser) still are a successful team and tightly bonded family unit: always assisted by her dog Buddy, and Horace’s Chihuahua Wink, both similarly adept at larceny.
By this point, Estella’s talent for cutting-edge fashion design has become obvious. Jasper therefore pulls some strings, and gets her an entry-level job at the world-famous fashion house run by the archly condescending Baroness von Hellman (Emma Thompson). But what should be a golden opportunity crashes to earth when Estella recognizes the Baroness as the woman her mother went to meet, that fateful evening.
This unhappy development resurrects Estella’s darker side — dubbed Cruella — and a desire for revenge that’s accompanied by a similarly strong determination to out-design and out-glam this puffed-up, aristocratic opponent. But how to accomplish that, when our heroine remains a behind-the-scenes cleaning woman?
Yep, I said “heroine.” Because it’s accurate. Because the Baroness clearly is the villain of this piece.
Unfortunately, the film begins to suffer from bloat at this point; Cruella’s schemes, successes and setbacks becoming tedious, as if the scripters are vamping for time. There’s a point at which Jasper and Horace begin to resent Cruella’s obsession, and her increased tendency to take them for granted, but nothing ever comes of that: likely a hanging chad from some earlier script draft.
Yes, Cruella’s outré creations — which is to say, Beavan’s costumes — are a constant hoot, but that’s a thin detail on which to hang a weakening plot.
Even so, Stone always holds our attention; her crafty, slightly feral gaze always promises mischief, and she’s certainly stylish, while dressing to kill. Thompson’s Baroness is similarly entertaining, with her insufferable ego, haughty flamboyance, dismissive impatience and fleeting power naps with cucumber slices covering her eyes.
Fry and Hauser are an engaging Mutt ’n’ Jeff team: the former cunning and observant, the latter a goofball who achieves success more by luck than wit.
John McCrea has a terrific supporting role as Artie, a glitzy fashionista with his own vintage shop, whose similarly quirky taste helps Estella embrace her wilder side. Mark Strong also stands out, as The Baroness’ steadfast, professionally unruffled valet.
Kirby Howell-Baptiste pops up as Anita Darling, a childhood friend from Estella’s school days, who has become a crusading journalist determined to get some dirt on the Baroness. Kayvan Novak barely registers as Roger, the Baroness’ lawyer. These two are merely token “name-check” characters, referencing Roger and Anita Darling, who own the Dalmatians in the 1961 film.
Indeed, this is little more than a name-check film, because this Cruella feels more like a riff on The Devil Wears Prada, than anything having to do with spotted dogs. There are no puppy moments here — aside from Buddy and Wink’s occasional antics — and no Dalmatians beyond the three owned by the Baroness.
In short, very little to engage the young viewers being courted by the advertising campaign.
Nor will Stone’s Cruella ever transform into the dog-hating witch of Smith’s story and the 1961 film, with jutting chin and dangling cigarette holder. This Cruella would no more skin dogs for their fur, than she’d set fire to a Christian Dior original.
So I’m left wondering: What, precisely, were these filmmakers aiming for?
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