And I didn't say that just to make a 101 Dalmatians pun. Cruella is a movie that feels, in a word, defanged— like it had higher aspirations to be something truly, delightfully wicked but is held back by Disney's standards to being merely okay. Emma Stone certainly looks the part of a budding villain, but merely looking the part is all we get. Plot-wise, we are given what feels more like a cross between a kid-friendly take on The Devil Wears Prada and a very watered-down version of Joker where the Joker is somehow depicted as a hero and given an even worse villain to fight.
This wouldn't matter quite as much if this movie were meant to take Cruella in a new direction, the way Maleficent did for the titular Sleeping Beauty villain. In that movie, Maleficent was portrayed as a hero, but the entire story was an alternate retelling of the animated movie— there was no implication that the wicked fairy who cursed Aurora in the original version was actually good. Not here, though. We're told that this is the origin story of the very same Cruella de Vil who goes on to kidnap 99 Dalmatian puppies and plans to slaughter them for their fur. If Cruella is meant to be evil, then the movie should let her be evil.
As it is, though, Cruella's actions in this movie are hard to contextualize with the character we know she will eventually become. At no point does Cruella ever truly snap and embrace her evil side. She remains a protagonist, if a somewhat off-kilter one, throughout the movie, never truly sliding into full-blown villain territory and emerging as the character we are all familiar with. It doesn't tell an alternative version of the story with Cruella as the hero, but neither does it allow her to fully become a villain, the way Arthur Fleck does in Joker.
The end result of all this is a movie that seems almost calculated, designed to be just "edgy" enough to appear rebellious and novel while in truth not attempting anything new.
On a final note, the movie implies that Pongo and Perdita are siblings. Make of that what you will.
This is one movie whose bark is definitely worse than its bite
And I didn't say that just to make a 101 Dalmatians pun. Cruella is a movie that feels, in a word, defanged— like it had higher aspirations to be something truly, delightfully wicked but is held back by Disney's standards to being merely okay. Emma Stone certainly looks the part of a budding villain, but merely looking the part is all we get. Plot-wise, we are given what feels more like a cross between a kid-friendly take on The Devil Wears Prada and a very watered-down version of Joker where the Joker is somehow depicted as a hero and given an even worse villain to fight.
This wouldn't matter quite as much if this movie were meant to take Cruella in a new direction, the way Maleficent did for the titular Sleeping Beauty villain. In that movie, Maleficent was portrayed as a hero, but the entire story was an alternate retelling of the animated movie— there was no implication that the wicked fairy who cursed Aurora in the original version was actually good. Not here, though. We're told that this is the origin story of the very same Cruella de Vil who goes on to kidnap 99 Dalmatian puppies and plans to slaughter them for their fur. If Cruella is meant to be evil, then the movie should let her be evil.
As it is, though, Cruella's actions in this movie are hard to contextualize with the character we know she will eventually become. At no point does Cruella ever truly snap and embrace her evil side. She remains a protagonist, if a somewhat off-kilter one, throughout the movie, never truly sliding into full-blown villain territory and emerging as the character we are all familiar with. It doesn't tell an alternative version of the story with Cruella as the hero, but neither does it allow her to fully become a villain, the way Arthur Fleck does in Joker.
The end result of all this is a movie that seems almost calculated, designed to be just "edgy" enough to appear rebellious and novel while in truth not attempting anything new.
On a final note, the movie implies that Pongo and Perdita are siblings. Make of that what you will.