The Morning Journal (Lorain, OH)
New ‘Cinderella’ with modern twists an absolute joy
With its modern ideas and clever covers, fresh take on fairy tale an absolute joy
Cannon is far from the sole reason “Cinderella” succeeds — wildly, we might add — but she is a big one.
This isn’t “Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella.”
It isn’t even Disney’s “Cinderella.”
No, the newest musical take on the beloved, centuries-old folk tale — a Sony Pictures production debuting on Amazon’s Prime Video platform this week — is the “Cinderella” for the “Pitch Perfect” set.
That’s an obvious conclusion considering that this “Cinderella” is written and directed by Kay Cannon, the writer and later director of the “Pitch Perfect” movies. It may stem from a brainstorm session by actor and talk host James Corden — who is a producer on the film and voices a mouse character who briefly becomes a human — but it has Cannon’s fingerprints all over it.
Cannon is far from the sole reason “Cinderella” succeeds — wildly, we might add — but she is a big one. Powered by excellent performances, plenty of humor, contemporary themes and catchy musical numbers consisting mainly of covers but also a couple of original songs, her “Cinderella” is infectious from its first few minutes and entertaining throughout its nearly two-hour run.
We shouldn’t go one more sentence without acknowledging the engaging, endearing and ear-pleasing performance by Cubanborn pop singer Camila Cabello in what is, more or
less, the movie’s titular role.
We say “more or less” because although Cabella’s character is named Ella, she’s referred to as “Cinderella”
by her rather daft stepsisters, Narissa (Charlotte Spencer) and Malvolia (Maddie Baillio), and her intermittently evil
stepmother, Vivian (Idina Menzel). (Due to Ella living in the dingy basement, her skin so often is “besmirched by cinders,” as a bit of narration informs us.)
When she’s not serving tea to the women of the house with higher social standings than she possesses, she’s designing dresses in her subterranean space. Her dream is to sell the dresses she creates from her own shop — a dream unlikely to be realized because women are forbidden from owning businesses in the kingdom.
Speaking of the realm, it is ruled by King Rowan (Pierce Brosnan), who is eager to see his son, Prince Robert (Nicholas Galitzine), enter into a marriage that would help obtain even more power and territory for the family. Robert, who’s closer with his mother, Queen Beatrice (Minnie Driver), would prefer not to marry for any reason other than love. Kids — what are you gonna do?
Rowan hasn’t been scoring points with his wife of late, and he all but ignores his daughter, Princess Gwen (Tallulah Greive), who walks around spouting thoughts about how to make the lives of his people better. However, the king does give his son a small window to find true love: After the prince becomes entranced by Ella she commits a faux pas at a public event, Robert convinces Rowan that the grand ball the latter wants to host for Robert should be open to all women, regardless of wealth and stature.
To ensure things go as he desires, Robert disguises himself as a commoner and looks for Ella in town to encourage her to attend. Upon finding her, he shares immediate chemistry with her. And when he takes an interest in her dress work, Ella becomes intrigued by the friendly stranger, who convinces her the ball would be an excellent venue for her to show off one of her creations.
When obstacles threaten to keep Ella from going to the affair, she gets some much-needed magical help from the Fab G (Billy Porter of “Pose”), a flashy fairy godmother of sorts. In an effort to save the day, he turns mice to men and conjures a whimsical dress of her design, along with some gorgeous glass footwear.
“Anyway you can make them more comfortable?” Ella asks Fab G.
“No,” he says.
“But you’re magic.” “Women’s shoes are as they are.”
This “Cinderella” is quite interested in providing an empowering message for women — essentially, that they can do anything with their lives they so please. And because we know how important a career in dressmaking is to Ella, we suspect it won’t be quite as simple as she and Robert finding love and living happily ever after. That it’s easy to spot the route for that ultimate outcome doesn’t spoil any of the fun.