'Cruella' Is Another Disney Fail
Cruella just isn't cruel enough.
Cruella De Vil, Cruella De Vil if she doesn’t scare you, no evil thing will.
Therein lies the rub, dearest droogies. Cruella, which comes out in theaters this evening and on Disney Plus as a special extra purchase Friday, isn’t scary.
Estella (Emma Stone) has a tragic backstory and an edgy alter-ego she calls Cruella and by the film’s end she’s exacted her revenge, but along the way the most awful thing she does is get a little impatient with her friends, Jasper (Joel Fry) and Horace (Paul Watson Hauser). Oh, and she plays some elaborate pranks on her nemesis, the Baroness (Emma Thompson).
At no point in the film does Cruella break bad. She doesn’t kill any puppies—not even the vicious Dalmatians she encounters. She’s actually a dog lover, making the distance between her backstory and 101 Dalmatians even greater than we could have imagined.
It’s one thing to create a sympathetic villain. By all means, give them a backstory that tugs at our heartstrings a little. But don’t sanitize Cruella. Don’t make her a good guy. Humanize her, give her depth, but this film needed to explain what drove her from sad little orphan girl to puppy-killing psychopath and it failed at that task.
Sure, the costumes were terrific and the casting was on-point, but the story left much to be desired.
You can watch my video review of the film below:
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Also read my Cruella review at Forbes.
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