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My kid and his friends talk to each other constantly, but they don’t hang out very much. His crowd doesn’t feel compelled to occupy the same space when socializing. When I was a teen, we were all congregating at the mall (translation: comic book shop), sharing the hot gossip (translation: chatting about Star Wars, D&D, and superheroes), and splitting an Orange Julius (okay, that one needs no translation – does it?). My son’s brood is comfortable connecting solely in the digital space. They are legion in text group chats.
Am I concerned about him getting FaceTime instead of face time? I do sometimes wonder about his social skills, but then he also chats up our local elected officials about gerrymandering, so maybe he’s got this? Teenagers think they’re so super insightful and hilarious. My kid shows me his text chats from time to time, and it turns out they like a lot of dumb jokes and use way too many emojis. Sometimes my son will also include a map he’s made depicting what the U.S. would look like if we’d never fought the Revolutionary War. Kids, am I right?
One of the more illuminating chats that he shared was started by a friend who had just discovered an old movie on Disney+. That’s what she called it: “an old movie.” She went on and on about this classic that she had unearthed. She proclaimed to everyone that “Cruella is everything, y’all.” Okay, I get it. The villain from the beloved 1961 animated film 101 Dalmatians iconically voiced by Betty Lou Gerson (who also narrated 1950’s Cinderella) is pretty legendary.
Those old-school Disney cartoons had a rogues’ gallery of unforgettable villainesses. Cruella de Vil, like the evil queen in Snow White and Maleficent in Sleepy Beauty, were way more memorable than the heroines they were taunting. With her wild fashion sense, duotone hair, and dangling cigarette holder (yeah, she smoked and it was a cartoon!), Cruella WAS everything! But that was not the film being hyped by this youngster.
She was also not raving about Glenn Close’s scenery chewing in the live-action remake from 1996. This kid was blowing up my son’s phone with love for an Emma Stone flick from 2021. Everything is relative, but four years classifies a movie as old these days? This must be the case in a world where current releases can go from the big screen to your TV in less than a month. Reading this exchange made me feel about as old as Cruella. The original one.
It also made me instantly curious about the movie in question. Was this recent iteration more than just a cash grab from a studio raiding its vault for content? Could this film finally answer the questions that no one was asking about a sexagenarian cartoon? Did audiences really want to know what was behind all those doggy issues? Is she indeed…everything? I was on a mission to find out the truth. Plus, I wasn’t going to be schooled by no teenyboppers.
I settled into my recliner and dialed up Disney+ on my Roku TV. After punching up the movie on the search feature because, you know, it’s “old,” I started streaming Cruella. Since Glenn Close owns this character in the live-action space, the movie goes the prequel route instead of doing another straight-up remake. Like those Angie Jolie horny witch lady movies, this one tries to turn a historic villain into a misunderstood antihero.
Cruella depicts the character as a child and follows her to adulthood so that we truly understand why she became a wacked-out fashion harpy obsessed with turning dogs into coats. This movie blends a little gothic drama with Mod London’s fashion scene with a soundtrack blasting awesome ‘60’s and ’70’s tunes. It weaves a tale about how a precocious girl with weird hair, a flair for clothes, and no impulse control became the scourge of dog moms everywhere. Shot with energy and a love for color, this movie has a retro vibe but also feels refreshingly up to date. It’s an origin story, a heist movie, and a fashion show all in one.
Emma Stone (an Oscar winner for La La Land and Poor Things) is eminently watchable. Her Cruella is all chaos and rebellion, delivering lines sharply in the British accent she rolled out for both Poor Things and The Favourite. Stone doesn’t make you forget Close’s performance as much as she grabs your attention with her take. This flick has style and a cruel wit, thanks to its star, director Craig Gillespie, and an army of screenwriters. One of whom (Aline Brosh McKenna) wrote The Devil Wears Prada. The influences are obvious.
Craig Gillespie is a beguiling filmmaker who has a way with quirky characters. He helped Margot Robbie snag acclaim as infamous figure skater Tonya Harding by turning that tabloid drama into a twisted comic fable. Gillespie also made that movie where Ryan Gosling fell in love with a sex doll, and he did a pretty decent remake of Fright Night with Colin Farrell. I can’t wait to see how he handles superheroes when he brings Supergirl to the big screen next summer.
He’s a master of making crowd-pleasing movies out of weird premises. His sensibilties are on full display here with two Emmas at his disposal. Stone and Emma Thompson (Love Actually, Dead Again, and the Harry Potter movies) spar deliciously as combatants in a glam couture war. Thompson plays Stone’s mentor/rival/nemesis and she’s devilishly ostentatious. The fashion world setting is justification for both of them to go gleefully over the top with clothes to match. The wardrobe people here all get gold stars. The frocks look fab!
Kudos to the director and his creative team for pouring champagne all over this production where lesser filmmakers would have just used sparkling cider. Cruella is a visual stunner and I applaud them for not serving up a retread of the original story. Despite all its panache, this movie still only exists to leverage an audience’s affection for a vintage cartoon. Cruella is fun to watch, but it’s just one big Easter Egg for 101 Dalmatians. It’s all eye candy.
So with all due respect to my son’s friend and her newfound appreciation for cinema, I have to disagree. This Cruella is not everything, y’all. Sure, we now understand why she’s not fond of dogs with spots, but do we really care? The character in her previous forms was delightfully unhinged. Audiences savored her sinister sass, but weren’t really struggling with her motivations. We don’t always need to know what drives our villains. Just being bad can be good enough.
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Author: Jeff Stanford
Nerd Dad who loves his family, coffee and movies.
