It’s always appreciated when a film knows exactly what it is. Yes, not every film is going to win awards or be remembered for years to come, but there’s a difference between a film that doesn’t achieve greatness and one that knows not to try. This might seem like a negative and that the people behind a film like that would be lazy, but “Cruella” is a perfect example of how that can end up making a film better.
Let’s get the most obvious thing out of the way first: the cast is absolutely stellar. Emma Stone (“La La Land,” “Zombieland”) is electric and completely devours the scenery as she smirks and connives her way across the streets of London as Estella/Cruella. It’s the textbook definition of watching an actor have fun with a role, and she not only manages to deliver a legitimately good performance, but delivers some lines and moments that, in lesser hands, would have completely fallen flat.
Emma Thompson (“Nanny McPhee,” “Saving Mr. Banks”) does just as much delightful overacting as Stone and the sequences where the two are opposite are the highlight of the film. Its just such a wonderful treat watching two fabulous actors both trying to out evil the other. If looks could kill, their scenes together would be graveyards and its just a delicious delight.
Really, everyone in the cast does a pretty great job with what they’re handed. Joel Fry (“Game of Thrones,” “Yesterday”) and Paul Walter Hauser (“Richard Jewel,” “BlacKkKlansman”) play Jasper and Horace, respectively, and the pair are scene stealers and the heart of the entire film. The fact that they result in the film about the puppy murdering villainess having a big beating heart is something that we’ll get to in a bit but suffice it to say that their and Stone’s talents make it easy to root for these underdog antagonists.
The supporting cast, as well, do their jobs well. Kirby Howell-Baptiste (“Why Women Kill,” “Infinity Train”) provides a sweet only friend to Cruella in the form of Anita Darling. Kayvan Novak (“What We Do in the Shadows”) is amusing, if all to brief, as bumbling lawyer turned songwriter Roger Radcliffe. John McCrea (“Giri/Haji,” “Dracula (2020)”) is another amusing and underutilized character as Cruella’s friend and lead designer Artie. Mark Strong (“Kingsman: The Secret Service,” “Shazam!”) is also here as the valet and right-hand man of Thompson’s Baroness. Strong is definitely the film’s oddest casting choice. He does a fine job, but he nevertheless stands apart whenever he’s on screen.
It’s clear that director Craig Gillespie (“Lars and the Real Girl,” “I, Tonya”) has tried to put as much of the antagonistic spitfire from his last project “I, Tonya” into this film, and while he mostly succeeds, this is still a Disney live-action property. There’s a certain kind of anarchic energy that the film maintains virtually effortlessly in its visual design. Its shockingly well shot, with cinematographer Nicolas Karakatsanis (“The Loft,” “I, Tonya”) delivering some truly wonderful sequences throughout the film’s runtime.
Really, the film has one big flaw and that’s the story at its center. Let’s make one thing very clear: a film’s script and its story are two very different things. This is an important distinction, because while the moment-to-moment dialogue and scenes can be, and frequently are, positively electric with joyous chaos and gleefully wicked dialogue, the overall story it’s all crammed into is decidedly less so. There’s a third act twists that feels rather out of place and brings the villain origin plot to a screeching halt as the writers seem determined to justify Cruella’s antagonistic deeds.
It’s as if these two major components (the script and the story) are working against each other, and its telling that none of the film’s three story writers, Aline Brosh McKenna (“The Devil Wears Prada,” “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend”), Kelly Marcel (“Saving Mr. Banks,” “Fifty Shades of Grey”), and Steve Zissis (“Togetherness”) wrote the script, which was instead written by Dana Fox (“Couples Retreat,” “How to Be Single”) and Tony McNamara (“The Favourite,” “The Great”).
However, despite the conflicting energy between the script, actors, director, pretty much everyone involved and the story, “Cruella” still maintains a delightfully high-strung amount of B-Movie energy throughout its entire runtime. Is all of it good? Not really, but it succeeds in taking big swings far more than it misses and the film as a result is never ever boring. It’s as if Gillespie and his actors looked at a plot that tried to “humanize” Cruella and decided to execute it in the least nice way possible.
This is a B-Movie with a budget, wonderfully cast and performed, directed with energy, and serving as a vehicle for some wonderful acidic confrontations and lines of dialogue. The film succeeds in spite of a sanitized overarching plot and manages to be all B-Movie thrills without the guilt. 4/5