'Cruella' review: The devil wears puppies
Courtesy of Disney
Nobody asked for Cruella de Vil’s origin story. Nobody was dying to know where this Disney villain came from and what possessed her to eventually want to kill dogs in the animated classic, “101 Dalmatians.” But in the tradition of “Wicked,” “Joker” and Disney’s own “Maleficent,” we’re forced to sympathize with a future antagonist and the results make for a very interesting mess.
The problems begin almost immediately with an unnecessary backstory and voiceover into young Estella’s childhood in 1960’s England. With a black-and-white mop of hair and a flair for fashion, she tackles life with the nuance of a bulldozer, creating problems at home for her very patient single mother. This wild side only comes out occasionally and to make it official, Estella even gives it a name. Cruella, naturally.
The Jekyll and Hyde routine inside her eventually goes too far and causes mom to die at the hands of three angry Dalmatians (all of this still within the film’s overstuffed prologue). Ten years later, Estella is still fashion hungry but forced to work the streets of London as a petty criminal to survive. She’s also played at this stage by Emma Stone, continuing the movie’s streak of annoying, on-the-nose music cues, and non-stop voiceover to cover up plot holes. “Cruella” definitely does not subscribe to the “show, don’t tell” school of filmmaking.
Teaming up with fellow crooks Jasper (Joel Fry) and Horace (Paul Walter Hauser), Estella becomes a quick criminal study and that teamwork eventually lands her to a dream job at London’s biggest fashion house. It’s a place crossed between “Phantom Thread” and “The Devil Wears Prada,” with a Miranda Priestly knockoff to match in the form of The Baroness (Emma Thompson). She’s an instant antagonist and Thompson sinks her teeth into every scene, making one wonder if an origin story about her villain would’ve been a better idea in the first place.
Initially, “Cruella” inspired hope for the best, mostly due to director Craig Gillespie. In the past he has taken bad ideas on paper and turned them into good, sometimes really good, movies. From a lonely Ryan Gosling falling with in love with a sex doll in “Lars and the Real Girl,” to an updated version of “Fright Night,” the clues for a good movie were there. Most recently, he even made fellow villain Tonya Harding sympathetic in “I, Tonya” but this time around, Gillespie and “Cruella’s” many credited writers (including “The Devil Wears Prada’s Aline Brosh McKenna) can’t save the film from itself. For every good decision, like putting Oscar winning costume designer Jenny Beavan’s lavish creations front-and-center, there’s the boneheaded idea to drown out the film with excessive padding. It even manages to shoehorn a forehead slapping Disney easter egg in the film’s post-credits scene, obviously setting up future adventures for the PG-level villain. “Cruella” is a very bloated 134 minutes long but feels like it would work a lot better at 101.
Rating: C
“Cruella” is now playing in theaters and streaming on Disney Plus.
