Obviously if you don’t like spoilers then it’s time to look away and go watch Cruella before learning what anyone has to say about it. Of course, if anyone watched videos like this before watching the movie they might find that their desire to watch kind of dwindles since the sensible and practical manner in which the movies are torn down is kind of disconcerting. But in the nature of having fun with it, since the suspension of disbelief is strong in Hollywood, the new Cruella movie is a tale that kind of redesigns the character in a way and tries to give people a reason to empathize with her since everything up until now has shown Cruella as a truly evil and vile woman that will do anything to get her way. Seeing her as anything but evil has already been done in the past in the show Once Upon A Time, but it’s likely that few people remember that, especially when Disney has been pushing this idea so hard. So it becomes plausible to show sympathy towards Cruella, who begins her life as a young girl who supposedly sees her mother killed by the Baroness, runs away, forms a group of thieves with a young Jasper and Horace, and then designs her own clothing line to rival of that of the Baroness, as she eventually becomes the cruel and vindictive individual she would one day become. Watching her become that coldhearted individual might have been nice, but it was a pretty quick transition from being an employee and thief to being someone that was on her way to wealth and power. From the moment this movie was announced to be happening it was kind of hard to think that it would follow the storyline that was laid down so long ago, especially since origin stories aren’t always known to do such a thing. One would think that it would be practical to do this, but it feels as though Cruella could be changing things up a bit, as at the end it’s more than evident that a race-swap has taken place, as is one of the more popular things to do these days in the sake of diversity.
Another fun thing to do apparently is to go beyond the suspension of disbelief and just go for everything that people will eventually accept since they want to know what’s going to happen and will therefore watch the movie even if they like it or not. The strategies used to get people to watch movies have definitely changed over the years, and not always for the better since those making the movies know too well that if they give too much then people might not be interested. People waiting on the movie to come out on video or to streaming doesn’t help the box office, as the pandemic taught us anew, but this practice of giving out the great parts of the movie in a trailer so that people will feel obligated to sit through the dull and unbelievable parts is tricky as hell, but not illegal of course. It’s a bit shifty, but it does work.
In the case of Cruella though, one has to remember that it’s based on a character from a Disney movie, which means that there are going to be plenty of things that one might not want to believe about the story, but will happen because it’s a fantasy of sorts. Fiction allows for quite a bit, and hiding an untested parachute in one’s clothing that will work without fail once one is pushed off of a balcony is one of those things. As is the idea that once the Baroness, who did the pushing, would go to jail and everything would go to her biological daughter, Cruella. This kind of storytelling has a lot of cushion since one way or another Cruella has to become rich and she has to have an obsession with dalmatians. But the whole skinning aspect might come later since at this point she actually gifts two dalmatians at the end of the movie. All in all, the Cruella movie wasn’t terrible, but it’s something that kids might find plausible, while adults might find a bit ‘meh’ when it comes to the storyline and the characters. That might sound unkind, but the truth of it is that the origin story didn’t exactly play out like many people thought it would, and while this isn’t a bad thing, it’s a bit confusing to think that it might not work entirely with the original story. If it does then it’s still an interesting movie, but not quite worth the hype it was given. It’s easy to show empathy for the girl Cruella was, but the woman she became is hard to stomach, let alone empathize with.
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