Cruella - June 2

 Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, so let us talk about ‘Cruella’ the movie instead.

What can be said about it? It’s long – at 2 h 14 min long, it could’ve been shorter. It is overindulgent, (not unlike the titular character), what with all the costumes, the music, and what else have you. Pause.

Let us try to talk about the message, and the plot line, instead, because complaining about technical issues does not really take us anywhere. The reviewers, the critics, etc. talked a lot about ‘I, Tanya’, and the other movies made by Mr. Gillespie, so let us talk about the actual influences here – Disney’s animated movies, such as the initial ‘Cinderella’, ‘Snow White’, and so on.

Seriously, I am calling out people here – ‘Cruella’ is designed as a typical Disney princess story: the righteous heir…ok, heiress, who is cheated out of her fortune by the evil mother/stepmother, who begins to run the kingdom…ok, the barony, by herself and no one can help our protagonist until she takes matters into her own hands. Pause. Simba from the original ‘Lion King’ movie rolls his eyes and matters that Cruella makes him feel like a Pansy, since his uncle actually ran his kingdom into the ground, while the Baroness was a success. How is that for cross-pollination?

…As for the ‘Devil Wears Prada’ franchise – do not go there. Initially, some of the ‘101 Dalmatians’ franchise pieces inspired it, but otherwise? Cruella was not a fashionista or anything; she was just a crazy rich woman who wanted to kill puppies to make herself a fur coat.

…Dalmatians’ skins and furs are actually rubbish from the fur industry’s P.O.V., and I suspect that Ms. Dodie Smith, who actually invented Cruella, Pongo, Perdita, Roger, Anita, and who else have you in the initial 2 novels, intended it to be so – her Cruella is rude, crude, entitled, and little else. Oh, and crazy, but this aspect of Cruella is her most defining and enduring one, from Ms. Smith’s books to the 2021 movie.

Getting back to the film, ‘Cruella’ differentiates from a Disney princess movie by Cruella being not just morally ambiguous, but also crazy, as in mentally unstable, something that is signified by her white and black hair, of course. Whether it stands for her split personality or something else, I do not know, but the titular character had no issues in proclaiming herself being ‘just a little bit mad’ or something. This is fine, this is her superpower, just as Elsa from the ‘Frozen’ franchise has powers over water and ice, but it does ‘unmake’ Cruella in being the underdog here, really, and makes the conflict between her and the Baroness rather undercut.

…Yes, this is probably a conflict between generations as well, respectable vs. rebellious, or something along those lines, but the conflict is still undercut; the entire issue of ‘grey morality’ isn’t exactly something that is safe or easy to discuss, and has plenty of its’ own baggage, but in ‘Cruella’, the titular character’s bicolored hair undercuts this concept as well, kind of – hence the entire confusion over the movie’s message.

…Is there actually a message in the movie? It is hard to say. Mr. Gillespie tried to combine the trope of the Disney princess movie with the modern individualism and the result is something akin to the relationship between Cruella’s bi-colored hair to the modern grey morality – a semi-existent mess… that was mostly buried by the stunning visual and audial pageantry. Hooray! Anything else?

Not particularly, no. ‘Loki’ is coming next week, (June 9, 2021), and we will get to see the trials of the god of chaos, who has been identified by everyone as being an unpredictable wild card that can’t be trusted. Still better than whatever the ‘Eternals’ movie is promising us in the future. This is it for now. See you all soon!