‘Cruella de Vil, Cruella de Vil
She is born to be bad, So run for the hills’
…as the credits of the new Disney+Hotstar film—Cruella—roll, you are left with mixed feelings. A precursor to Glenn Close’s Cruella in the 101 Dalmations franchise, this is actually the beginning of how Estella (Emma Stone) metamorphoses into Cruella. And since this is in part a sob story of the ‘poor little orphan girl’ that Disney so loves, we have the other Disney predictable—the evil Baroness (a brilliant Emma Thompson, who could give Meryl Streep’s Miranda Prisetly in The Devil Wears Prada a run for her famed ‘white Hermes scarf’).
But we digress. Coming back to the story, there is nothing not predictable about it. A single mother with a talented and creative child goes to London to give her daughter the life she deserves. But, horror-of-horrors, the ‘sweetest woman’ is thrown off a cliff by the ferocious Dalmatians owned by the evil Baroness von Hellman. Now here is problem one with the story: Anyone who has owned dogs will tell you that Dalmatians can at best be ‘high-strung’, but definitely not ‘ferocious’ enough to knock off poor women into a death pit. Second problem: Little Estella clearly sees the palatial residence of the Baroness and sees her heartlessly killing her mother. Yet the next time she comes across both, she has no recollection of it. Maybe, it can be attributed to a child’s poor memory, but then when your mother is killed off in that fashion; it is not a thing one forgets in a hurry.
The story progresses nicely about how this super-talented slip-of-a-girl, Estella, is fashion redefined. The pace is nice; not hanging for too long on any particular scene after it serves its purpose. The two Emmas—one decidedly evil, and the other slightly mad—are brilliant because finally here is a filmmaker, Craig Gillespie of I, Tonya fame, who has the courage and conviction to allow his leading ladies to go beyond the Miss-Goody-Two-Shoes of Saving Mr. Banks and La La Land.
But beyond that, this film fails at many levels. Worst of all, it fails to answer the very question it set out to explore—even after having revenged her mother’s death, why is Estella still Cruella? If one connects the story with the 101 Dalmatians series, one would remember how Cruella loves to skin Dalmatian pups for coats. But our Cruella actually has a pooch she adores. Clearly, there is some disconnect here. All said and done, watch it for the marvellous costumes, and the brilliant Emma Stone and Emma Thompson.