And while I will say that Emma Stone does do a great job of portraying her, the movie itself just falls flat on so many levels. There just isn't enough juice in this story to warrant it being told. But, since Disney likes money and people keep taking in what Disney dishes out, this film made enough money for Disney to warrant a sequel being made. Oh goodie...
Plot: The story begins with Estella, the daughter of a single mother named Catherine who proves to be a bit of a troublemaker in schools. While seeking some financial assistance to help put her daughter through school, Catherine is attacked and killed by some Dalmatians (really? of all the dogs...), leaving Estella orphaned and forced to live on the streets of London with her new friends Jasper and Horace. Ten years later and the trio are still menacing the streets of London despite now being grown up. Estella gets a job at a local department store, she is unhappy with the treatment she gets and drunkenly rearranges the store's window display, drawing in the attention of the Baroness, who hires Estella to work for her fashion house designing new clothing. But while working for her, she discovers that she is wearing a necklace that had once belonged to Estella's mother and recruits Jasper and Horace to steal it.
At the Baroness's ball, Estella adopts the persona of Cruella and infiltrates a prestigious party. During their planned theft of the necklace, Cruella discovers that it was the Baroness who had ordered the Dalmatians to attack and kill her mother Catherine. Seeking revenge, Cruella begins to upstage the Baroness and orchestrate the theft of those same Dalmatians, managing to do so with the aid of her childhood friend and gossip reporter Anita Darling. Fed up with this "upstart" undermining her, the Baroness has Jasper and Horace arrested and leaves Cruella to die in their burning home, but she's rescued by the Baroness's valet, who helps Cruella to see that Catherine and John had saved Estella from being killed as a baby, as she was truly the daughter of the Baroness who wanted her dead to ensure she retained her husband's fortune when he died. Realizing the truth, Cruella must break her friends out of prison and confront the woman who had ruined her life in one final showdown for the ages.
What's Wrong?: Many dogs have a stigma against them for being vicious, nasty and cruel dogs. We all have one dog prejudice, either for or against them. I've been terrified of Rottweilers since one chased myself, my sister and a couple of friends into the tennis courts in the Town Houses we lived in as kids. But I know that doesn't mean that Rottweilers are all bad dogs. Lots of people have the same fear of Pit Bulls. What matters for a Dog is how it's raised, not some birth defects from being some kind of dog. Dalmatians have a penchant for being slightly nasty, but never attack dogs. To pin the death of Cruella's adopted mother on dogs, which is what Cruella does for a good portion of this movie and will likely do so in the sequel as we approach the time frame for the original story, is just ludicrous to me. Her obsession with furs and trying to upstage the Baroness with them wasn't necessary to the story and just once again plays into the bad reputation that quite a few breeds of dogs have nowadays.
Unfortunately for the movie, I expected the twist from the word go. I knew there was a something odd about Estella's adopted mother went specifically to this woman for aid and how this would tie in to Cruella's backstory. Maybe it's because of how often Disney tries this cheap trick of trying to subvert expectations for the sake of just the subversion, but I'm getting tired of them thinking they need to be smarter than the audience, because since Hans came along, they have been extremely bad at it. Need we forget Big Hero 6, Zootopia, Incredibles 2, Maleficent and Frozen II's lousy attempts at this. You do not need to subvert expectations just to do so. Especially for a movie where we're already supposed to empathize with Cruella for some asinine reason.
And let's get to that. Nothing against Emma Stone's portrayal, because both she and Emma Thompson were very good in these roles. But Cruella is anything but a character that could or should be considered a role model as some critics have called her. And this has nothing to do with the original book, the animated film version or the Glen Close portrayals. This is entirely to do with the character they've written here. She is a bad apple from the word go. She shows no remorse for what she does with both Jasper and Horace when it comes to thieving or any of the behavior she was said to show early in the movie that got her pulled out of the school she was in. I find movies where both the protagonist and antagonist being reprehensible people hard to get through, especially knowing that this is Disney and they would never go the full way in that direction. They would never make Cruella do something so evil that we hate her by the end of it, especially in these "reimaginings" of their previously fine villains. I cannot wait for the Peter Pan remake when they have Captain Hook be a wonderfully decent Pirate who lost his father to a Crocodile and thus has a hatred of both them and kids for some unexplained reason, until it's revealed that Peter Pan is actually Hooks son or some stupid nonsense like that. Let me just say that it is going to be very odd to see this Cruella get outdone by farm animals in the inevitable sequel.
What's Good?: I will say the acting in this movie is up to snuff. Both Emmas (Stone and Thompson) do superb jobs with an otherwise passable script, but I expect that from top notch actresses like these. As for the rest of the cast, they're pretty good too. I liked both Paul Hauser and Joel Fry's take on Jasper and Horace, not wanting them to be too similar to the bumbling oafs Cruella hires to take out the puppies in 101 Dalmatians and trying to put their own spins on them.
I also have to give credit where it's due and say that the costume designing for this movie is spot on with what I expected it to be, in a good way this time. Having been forced to sit through numerous tapings of America's Next Top Model and all these other lousy shows about fashion models, I was initially afraid that they were not going to let Cruella or the Baroness be too creative with their outfits. Fortunately, I was wrong. They let Cruella's inner madness for fashion go all out and she comes out in increasingly more bizarre yet delightfully Cruella-esque outfits. We never get to see her traditional outfit, but I'm guessing they'll save that for a later film.
Overall: Cruella is a largely uneven film. It has solid acting and great costume designs, but the plot is predictable from the word go and the way they set up the reasoning behind what will become Cruella's hatred of Dalmatians and her desire to make a fur coat from them is mediocre and it's take on trying to make Cruella sympathetic fails miserably. It's certainly not the worst of these Disney Remakes (that honor goes to either Aladdin or Mulan), but it's far from a good movie. As usual with these nonsensical remakes, just go in with your expectations very low and you might find a bit of enjoyment from them.
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