Cruella (2021 | USA | 134 minutes | Craig Gillespie)
Perhaps buoyed by the success of Wicked as villain image rehab or the fact that kids who watch the Star Wars films in numerical order grow up liking Darth Vader, Disney has dipped into its intellectual property vaults to explore the long-burning question of whether that mean fashion designer lady who wanted to skin a bunch of Dalmatians for the purposes of making a coat was ever, at some point, not the embodiment of pure puppy-killing evil. In a flat and overlong new prequel, they settle the mystery of “what kind of parent names their kid Cruella and expects them to turn out OK?” while also revealing that, like most living humans, Cruella de Vil was once younger, less wealthy, and marginally less monstrous.
In the first of too many voiced-over montages, we glimpse Cruella’s origins as young Estella: first a baby with that signature black-and-white cookie haircolor, then a rambunctious child with a wildly independent streak (Cruella is her kindly single mother’s nickname for her daughter’s misbehaving impulses) whose pugnaciousness results in many black dots (subtle!) in her permanent record. Eventually, her school troubles motivate a move from the countryside to the big city of London with a stop along the way at a fancy manor that happens to be hosting a big Versailles-style soiree. The party, with its gaudily garbed attendees proves irresistible to the budding fashionista and becomes the pivotal event of her life, from sparking her desire for a career in high fashion to the fierce guard dogs (Dalmatians, of course) who chase a snooping Estella and her adorable scamp of a dog from the property.
Without revealing too many details, one can hardly spell D-I-S-N-E-Y without O-R-P-H-A-N, so it will come as little surprise that little Estella eventually finds herself all alone in London. There, she’s adopted as the third member of a gang of child crooks by the boys who will someday grow up to be her henchmen. Ten or so years later, we find her (played by Emma Stone with a pretty good posh British accent) still living in a well-appointed abandoned warehouse, hiding her distinctive hair color(s) beneath a passable dye job, and making fabulous costumes for the gang’s small-scale grifts. Joel Fry plays Jasper, the perceptive one, and the typecast Paul Walter Hauser is the big slow-witted Horace (stretching his usual schtick with a broad Cockney-ish accent). As evidence that their future evil-doings are #NotAllDogs, they share their space and schemes with an adorable mutt and a one-eyed chihuahua who’s always game to dress up for a role.
As with his previous portrait of a difficult woman whose difficult childhood set up a high profile criminal act (I, Tonya), director Craig Gillespie’s muddled efforts here are overly reliant on fourth-wall-breaking narration and excessive montages to advance the story. In this case, they are a celebration of the music (the Clash, the Doors, and Blondie are among the high profile needle drops), fashion, and vibes of 1970s London, which might appeal to nostalgic grandparents or spark a retro revival among their grandchildren. Regardless, all this menial labor and suffering the wide-eyed chagrin of buttoned up foppish men in oversized glasses who fail to see her genius is a very long pretext to finally get one Oscar-winning Emma in the same scene as the other Oscar-winning Emma (Thompson, in a gleefully wicked performance as Baroness von Hellman, channeling a tween-friendly Devil Wears Prada style fashion executive who snarls at everything she surveys). Their meeting catalyzes Estrella’s ascent through the harsh world of London high fashion, sets up a not-very-surprising-revelation, and turns our would-be villainess to a path of vengeance.
As much as it’s entertaining to watch the Emmas spar, they both devolve into caricature as their relationship shifts from mentorship to rivalry. There are some enjoyable little capers and no shortage of eye-catching fashion, both the Baronness’s couture as well as the “punk rock” fashions that emerge when Estrella “activates” her long-suppressed alter ego and releases Cruella as an agent provocateur who upends the stuffy establishment with a series of guerrilla stunts to showcase her edgy designs (scored “I Wanna Be Your Dog”, naturally). Unfortunately, though, no amount of fashion feuds and increasingly dangerous gambits can compensate for the core problem that they haven’t come up with anything very interesting to say about someone on course to becoming a one-dimensional villain.
In an effort to be broadly appealing and to avoid offense (after all, Disney can’t outright endorse “puppy murderess” as a viable career path, even on its premium channel) it locates Cruella’s origin story in a simplistic cycle of mean ladies being mean to each other because they’re mean. Unwilling to condemn someone as charming as Emma Stone to twisted tale that revels in the delights of impending evil, yet not sophisticated enough to establish her as a complicated anti-hero bound for a dark future, it is stuck in a mushy moral middle ground. Instead of finding something to say, Cruella spins its wheels for a couple of hours of often-appealing visuals, throwaway lessons about friendship, enough audaciously-designed dresses to fill an entire season of Project Runway (credit for these marvels to prodigious designer Jenny Beavan), and a mission to exhaust every possible reference to 101 Dalmatians. By the end, the whole enterprise feels brought into existence not by any grand idea, but simply to squeeze more money out of an old franchise.
Cruella will release simultaneously in theaters and on Disney+ with Premier Access for a onetime additional fee on Friday, May 28.