Cruella 2021

Cruella tells the origin story of one of the biggest love-to-hate Disney villains of all time, Cruella DeVil. Before she was a feared hater of animals, Cruella was known as Estella DeVil, an orphan with dreams of one day becoming big in the name of fashion. She begins working for the Baroness, a no-nonsense fashion expert with a killer extinct to do what needs to be done. When Cruella realizes the Baroness may have had something to do with her mother's death, something dark and long-hidden in Estella begins to rear it's ugly head.

Tell you what, I didn't know what to expect from Cruella, but I definitely wasn't expecting this. I had seen a lot of other folks say that this was their favorite Disney Live Action remake, and I had to scoff that off, simply because this isn't a remake of anything. You want a remake of 101 Dalmations, they already have that -- that was Disney's very first live action remake, actually -- Cruella is simply a prequel/spinoff/reimaging that introduces a well-known villain in the same vein of Maleficent -- but even Maleficent was a remake -- it was just presented with a different perspective. This is just an origin story -- so it's hard for me to include it in the same list of the others, but it works, and people are indeed correct when they say this is either one of the best or the best live-action Disney remake, and I'll try to explain why.

When thinking back to those 101 Dalmation films, I have to say that they don't immediately feel nostalgic. I think those stories are fine, but when it came to Disney, I related a lot more with other films, so I felt at best, Cruella would feel like that -- but I might make the argument that this is better than the cartoon or live action remake of the original Dalmation films because there was so much focus on certain things like production design, set design, hair and makeup, cinematography, editing, soundtrack. Everything. I think my entire Behind-the-Scenes category scored perfect points with this film. It knew exactly what it wanted to be, and what it wanted to atmospherically feel like.

That's another thing -- even though this is arguably much darker and edgier than those fluffy 101 Dalmation movies that kids can love, I weirdly enough fully believed this took place, or could take place in the same universe -- which was a similar feeling I got when watching Joker that that world could eventually see Batman show up and battle Joaquin Phoenix's version of the Joker -- so, I'm gonna say it...this is the best acting I've ever seen from Emma Stone, as well. She really gave it her all here -- as soon as she got this sultry British accent going, there was no doubt in my mind that her performance alone would be the selling point for this film -- and even if you're a die-hard fan of Glenn Close as Cruella, I'm telling you right now that...Emma Stone kills it as this absolutely troubled and even crazy character who is often holding back an explosion of emotion, and how difficult she finds that to be, especially because being "cruel" is in her nature. So, her performance, in addition to the solid use of visuals, cinematography, editing, and music makes Cruella a very good Disney film that's worth the watch, especially if the tried and true remake formula leaves a distaste in your mouth.

Personally, I don't have a ton of negatives for the film, either. I don't think it's perfect...or a masterpiece...not by a long shot. There's a few element in the movie that I'm sure could have been approached better, but I couldn't find one area in the film that specifically stood out to be as bad. So, take that as you will and let's take a look at my final score. From a technical vantage point, the main areas that stand out to me definitely come down to the visuals, as this is a very...artsy kind of film. It tries desperately to get things right in the costume department, hair and makeup, production design and the like. It's a very visually appealing film in general. The cinematography and editing gives this film an ambience that is, at least to me, incredibly welcome. The music choices were also interesting, because this is definitely an era type film where it takes place in the past, but they're often using modern/current music choices, which I thought worked wonders here. Past that, Emma Stone's performance, as well as everyone else's really, was all worth a mention. This technical, unbiased score is 92%.

My biased score, or how I felt about the film in general, is a little bit higher because I was honestly kind of blown away by how good it actually was. There was two movies that came out the same weekend. Cruella and A Quiet Place II, and I can't speak for A Quiet Place II, as I haven't seen it yet, but I fully expected it to be better than Cruella, and now I'm honestly questioning that. My biased score is 94%, and when we average these two scores together, we come to the final rating of 93%, 93 out of 100 possible stars, or an A letter grade.

I'm as surprised as you are, but they did a lot right here. When initially, I questioned Emma Stone's casting, I now think she was perfectly cast, that she was essentially born to play this role.

...PEACE OUT