I’m oddly fascinated by Craig Gillespie’s Cruella, not because the movie is good, but because it’s such a perfect case study of every tired trend and trope currently infecting mainstream blockbusters. It’s like the way the Disney greenlit the project is that they looked across the company's vast array of intellectual properties (IP), picked One Hundred and One Dalmatians, and said, “This is a box. Fill it with something that is popular.” And that’s how you get a movie like Cruella where it’s part superhero origin but also a supervillain origin and also a tepid girl-power message and also the inevitable twist that shows a revelation about the protagonist’s lineage while also dumping on loads of style like dunking a rice cake in a vat of chocolate to mask the lack of taste. And yet for all the flair Gillespie and his cast bring to the project, they can’t hide that Cruella is too long, too bloated, and is a trend-chaser rather than a trendsetter like its title character. There are times when the film still manages to be fun, but it’s a de Vil’s bargain.

Cruella lurches through a painfully long first-act where we have to go all the way back to the childhood of Estella (Emma Stone), a girl with a rebellious streak, black-and-white hair, and raised by a kindly mother. Her mother cautions her daughter not to give in to her dark side, dubbed “Cruella”. When her mother is knocked over a cliff by dalmatians who were chasing young Estella, the child feels responsible. Growing up an orphan on the streets of London, she meets fellow strays Jasper (Joel Fry) and Horace (Paul Walter Hauser), and they form a trio of grifters, but Estella longs to be a fashion designer on the level of the glamorous Baroness (Emma Thompson). When Estella finally gets her shot, she’s ecstatic (despite the Baroness’ casual cruelty) until she learns that the Baroness used a dog whistle to call the dalmatians that purposefully knocked Estella’s mother off a cliff, so Estella vows revenge. I am not making any of this up.

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Image via Disney

You can already see how tortured the film is in trying to have it both ways that Cruella is a dark and twisted individual but also sympathetic, like a Disney/PG-13 version of 2019’s Joker. But The Joker is a popular character who has only grown over the years because there’s been a steady stream of stories about the Clown Prince of Crime. There’s really only one Cruella story, and it’s One Hundred and One Dalmatians, which isn’t even a particularly good Disney movie. That Cruella is a thinly-drawn character whose plan—kidnap a bunch of puppies, skin them, and turn them into a coat yet somehow avoid responsibility for the kidnapping—makes no sense. Cruella kind of dances around all this by still trying to show its protagonist as rebellious and twisted, but someone who would never hurt a dog as she adopts a stray puppy in the first ten minutes of the movie. Thus, the defining characteristic of this Disney villain—lady who wants to kill dogs—is effectively neutered.

So what are we left with? Curiously, in its second act, Cruella becomes a much better movie as it turns into a fashion war between Cruella and the Baroness with Cruella still masquerading as the meek, timid Estella to stay close to the Baroness. While it feels forced into a superhero trope—Cruella being the alter-ego of Estella and dressing up in costumes to be her true self—I’d be totally down for a movie about warring fashion designers. The problem is that’s not IP, and Disney can’t abide producing an original theatrical feature. There are shareholders to consider, and if you make a movie that flops, then IP is a useful shield against failure. No one took a chance on something untested, and One Hundred and One Dalmatians is a brand people know. It didn’t work, but at least no one was reckless by trying something new.

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Image via Disney

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It’s captivating to watch Cruella strain against any kind of risk even though everyone involved seems to be having a blast. Gillespie certainly didn’t phone anything in, and Jenny Beavan feels like a shoo-in for a Best Costume Design Oscar nomination. Stone is her usual winning self as she chews the scenery, while Fry and especially Hauser are hilarious in their supporting roles. Even the Baroness, a one-dimensional, irredeemable, obvious villain, comes alive because Thompson is so good at making that villainy delectable. For a film that feels like the definition of soulless studio product, it seems like no one involved in the production got that memo and really tried to make a fun, lively movie even if it’s forced to labor under so many worn out story tropes and stylistic choices.

If you even think about Cruella for more than 30 seconds, it starts to become infuriating. For example, the film is wall-to-wall needledrops from the era, and I can’t help but wonder when The Stooges were recording “I Wanna Be Your Dog” in 1969 if Iggy turned to Dave, Ron, and Scott, and said, “This song is good, but I hope one day it gets used in a live-action Disney adaptation of One Hundred and One Dalmatians that explores the origins of Cruella de Vil. You know, because dogs.” But the scene it’s used in is fun because it’s part of the whole fashion war sequence, and it’s colorful, and Stone is leaning into her character’s dark side, and you kind of want to go with it until you realize that a Cruella de Vil origin story is a sign of total creative bankruptcy, but it may sell some Cruella girl power t-shirts at Hot Topic.

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Image via Walt Disney Studios

And yet I can’t even bring myself to be mad at Cruella, partially because of the effort from the production, but partially because it would be like getting mad at the weather. It’s a thing that happens from time to time, and while I’m sure there’s a bit of “Old Man Yells at Cloud” here on my part, I also feel like this is nothing new. Disney is not going to stop adapting IP nor is any other studio because there’s no money and no audience for an original idea on a blockbuster scale. Granted, that doesn’t mean an adaptation of IP has to be almost a full hour longer than the thing that it’s based on, but even here I can’t bring myself to get angry at something as disposable as Cruella. It doesn’t tarnish One Hundred and One Dalmatians because there was nothing to tarnish. The film will be forgotten the weekend after it hits theaters because one of the things that’s wrong with modern blockbusters is that they’re purposefully ephemeral. To use an analogy apt to the film’s protagonist, Cruella is not haute couture. It’s cheaply made for the purposes of mass production, and you wear it while purposefully ignoring how it was made.

Rating: C-

Cruella is now playing in theaters and is available on Disney+ through Premier Access.

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