THE DE VIL WEARS PRADA
CRUELLA’S FASHION CHOICES ARE SPECTACULAR — BUT STORY GOES STRAIGHT TO THE DOGS
Cast: Emma Stone, Emma Thompson Director: Craig Gillespie
Duration: 2 h 16 m Available: In select cinemas and on
Disney+ for an additional fee.
Movie villains used to have it easy. They were either misunderstood from square one, and just had to wait for everyone else to recognize their inherent goodness — see Shrek, the Beast from Beauty and the Beast, Frozen’s Elsa, etc. — or else they were free to be evil without any attempt at explanation.
Nobody ever asked why Hans Gruber went into crime. And Auric Goldfinger? His sole motivation was right there in the title-song lyrics: “He loves only gold / Only gold / He loves gold / He loves only gold / Only gold / He loves gooooold!”
But we are well and truly into the era of redemptive backstories, with attempts to understand (Joker, Venom, Harley Quinn), or in some cases fully rehabilitate iconic villains, as in Disney’s Maleficent and the upcoming film adaptation of Broadway’s Wicked.
Cruella tackles the rise to infamy of evil fashion mogul Cruella De Vil. Alas, it takes the easy narrative path, by creating an even eviler villain who pushes the not-yetevil Cruella into her wicked ways. Also, when she was 12 years old, three Dalmatians killed her mother. That’s bound to knock anybody morally sideways.
Young Estella (Tipper Seifert-cleveland), tries to be good
but seems to have a mean streak as deeply rooted as her white-andback bifurcated hair. “Your name’s Estella, not Cruella,” says her mom (Emily Beecham).
After her mother’s death, she finds herself an orphan in 1964 London, and quickly falls in with a pair of Dickensian ragamuffins. Cut to 10 years later and I guess the life of a street urchin can’t be easy, because the trio of preteens has aged into Emma Stone, Joel Fry and Paul Walter Hauser, none of whom can pass for 22. (Also, good luck fitting this movie’s timeline into either the original One Hundred and One Dalmatians from 1961, or the live-action remake of 1996, both set in what was then the present.)
Stone’s character bounces around for a while (the movie runs two hours and 16 minutes, so plenty of time for bouncing), before finding employment in a fashion house run by The Baroness, a real narcissistic so-and-so played by Emma Thompson. It’s the battle of the Oscar-winning Emmas, with the winner getting all the scenery she can chew, and any scraps going to the dogs.
Stung by her employer’s casual cruelties (and some other revelations best left for viewers to discover on their own), Estella adopts the moniker Cruella, drops her redhead looks in favour of her natural twotone hair colour, and proceeds to engineer The Baroness’s downfall, aided by her increasingly reluctant Mutt-and-jeff co-conspirators.
Cruella doesn’t seem certain of its target audience. It’s neither as simple nor as sweet (nor anywhere near as short!), as the original animated tale. And there are some scenes that might frighten the very young, such as the one in which a character is left by another to die in a fire. Also, implied skinning of Dalmatians for fashion reasons.
But a large part of it is fairly innocuous growling by the protagonists, backed by a rock-tastic soundtrack that includes snippets of the Zombies, Nancy Sinatra, Nina Simone, ELO and the Rolling Stones. And the costumes are to die for — there’s one scene in which Cruella tumbles out of what looks to be a garbage truck, awash in flotsam and jetsam, which then — surprise! — is revealed to be an elaborate train to her dress.
But it’s all so much sugary ear- and eye-candy, without any real nutritional narrative underpinning. As such, the film wears out its welcome well before its exhaustive runtime is through.
And therein lies a lesson to any future Disney villain origin stories, which I’m guessing might include Gaston from Beauty and the Beast, The Little Mermaid’s Ursula and Scar from The Lion King. Embrace your villainy like Harley Quinn, or jettison it completely like Maleficent did. You can’t have your dogs and wear them, too.