Directed by: Craig Gillespie
Starring: Emma Stone, Emma Thompson, Joel Fry, Paul Walter Hauser
Rated PG-13, 134 minutes
As the saying goes, there is nothing new under the sun. “Cruella,” the latest in a long line of major studio films reselling old intellectual property for new profit, gives us everything we expect and nothing we don’t. It’s an expensive-looking movie, with a cast and crew admirably committed to their work, but what good is all that effort when assembled around a premise this insipid? “Cruella” feels like it must be a parody, but amid its halfhearted camp is a vain and self-serious conviction—not about life or the nature of evil, but merely of Disney’s own relevance.
Much of what’s unfortunate about this origin story of Cruella de Vil is demonstrated in its opening minutes. As a young girl, Cruella (birth name Estella) watches in horror as a trio of dalmatians push her mother over a cliff and to her death. Thus, evidently, is the seed planted for Cruella’s eventual scheme to make a fur coat out of dalmatians (the source of the plot of “101 Dalmatians”). But this scene of childhood trauma is so crudely rendered as to be laughable, so shallow as to be tacky.
Equally tacky is the movie’s depiction of how she grows into the villain we know. In 1960s London, Estella (Emma Stone, “La La Land”), who hides her naturally half-black-half-white hair with a red wig, falls in with a pair of street thieves, Jasper (Joel Fry, “Yesterday”) and Horace (Paul Walter Hauser, “I, Tonya”), the three of them subsisting on whatever they can steal and living in the loft of an old warehouse. But Estella has a darker, narcissistic side—a split personality of sorts—which emerges when she starts working at the fashion house of the self-absorbed Baroness von Hellman (Emma Thompson, “Sense and Sensibility”). As a rivalry grows between her and the Baroness, her Cruella side supplants Estella entirely, like a parasite taking over its host. Like her hair, Disney’s best guess as to how good people come to do evil things is starkly black and white, with no room for the possibility that people learn to justify their bad behavior to themselves. The movie may be live action, but the characters are as flat as cartoons.
Luckily, the movie has several design elements working in its favor. Taking place in the world of London high fashion, “Cruella” makes a meal of its costumes, ranging from elegant ball gowns to garbage bag trains, and even a dress beaded painstakingly with butterfly pupae. We’re meant to feel the daring in Cruella’s artistic vision and the fading star of the Baroness’s own prominence, and we do. Elaborate set pieces and over-the-top makeup enhance the movie’s sense of camp, which is the only reason its two-plus hours feel tolerable.
Less impressive is the movie’s soundtrack, seemingly curated to show off Disney’s licensing budget. To wit, the Rolling Stones, Deep Purple, the Clash, Supertramp, Electric Light Orchestra, the Zombies, and more turn up (no Beatles or Led Zeppelin, but covers of both by Ike and Tina Turner). Like other movies with an abundance of needle drops intended to evoke a time and place (looking at you, “Forrest Gump”), the music choices in “Cruella” feel like an act of pandering. And worse, they’re a mismatch for the story at hand. What says “countercultural icon” or “shocking villainy” in 2021 like a primer of 50-year-old classic rock staples? I’m almost surprised George Thorogood’s “Bad to the Bone” doesn’t turn up; nothing is too on-the-nose for “Cruella.”
What’s even the point of a movie like “Cruella”? It sheds no light on any characters of depth or substance. It doesn’t even make sense as a lead-in to “101 Dalmatians,” given that Cruella’s feelings toward dalmatians have smoothed over by the movie’s end. It’s also a movie without an audience; its PG-13 rating puts it out of reach for young kids who might like “101 Dalmatians,” but its corporate retro-punk tone makes it too tame for older audiences who got their last dose of archvillain backstory in the much more ambitious “Joker.” No, “Cruella” seems to exist simply because a dart landed on an index card in a wall of old ideas. If there really is nothing new under the sun, it’s because studios like Disney prefer to keep it that way.
Originally published in The Harvard Press on 6/11/21.