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.)
