The following contains spoilers for Cruella (2021):
I had the same reaction as everyone else when the first trailer dropped, asking out loud, “Is this what we’re doing now? Which villain is next to get a sympathetic backstory— the Child Catcher from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang?” No matter how this turned out, it would only reinforce the belief that Hollywood lacks a specific agenda and operates more as a reactive entity driven by recreating past financial successes before anything else. Since Joker raked in more money than anyone anticipated— especially the producers— it only makes sense that Disney would dig into their library for classic villains they could wring some sympathy dollars out of. All condescension toward the premise aside, Cruella is tolerably made compared to its empty-headed edgelord crush, but I say that in the same sense that Those Who Wish Me Dead was tolerable— until you thought about the script, where it was coming from, and who it was even intended for. There’s certainly a more satisfying throughline here, you can tell a lot of work went into where it counts, and it’s even occasionally funny and engrossing. But start asking questions, and the whole affair comes off as hollow— more interested in being the movie it wants to be than what it could have been.
To summarize the setup: Estella Miller is a child in England with a talent for fashion design and a sharp tongue that leads her mother, Catherine, to nickname her “Cruella.” After getting kicked out of a prestigious school for rebellious behavior, her mother decides to move them to London. On the way, they stop at a wealthy costume party held at a manor, where Catherine leaves Estella in the car for a few minutes. Estella grows impatient and enters the party herself, catching the attention of three guard dogs— you guessed it, Dalmatians. While being chased, Estella sees Catherine asking the host for financial support near a cliffside. Just as Estella thinks she’s about to be caught, the Dalmatians run past her, up to Catherine, and push her off the cliff. Estella immediately blames herself, escapes the manor grounds, and spends the night near a public fountain in London.
The next morning, she meets Jasper and Horace (her burglar cohorts, in case you don’t remember— I didn’t at first) as kids, and they band together as grifters well into their early 20s (though the cast playing them are all in their 30s— but w/e, recognizable names and all). Dyeing her until-now B&W hair red, Estella takes a job at Liberty department store as a cleaner. A bad day at work leads to a night of overtime and drinking. Growing more and more annoyed by the store’s lack of creativity, Estella takes a literal bag of trash and applies everything she knows to a front window display. The next morning, the display catches the attention of Baroness von Hellman— a haute couture designer with an even sharper tongue and the old money to back it up. She hires Estella as a designer after chastising the store manager, saying the display is better than anything he’s done in a decade. However, Estella’s ladder up to her dream career is complicated when she notices the Baroness wearing a brooch last seen around Catherine’s neck before her death. After the Baroness claims the brooch was stolen by a former employee, Estella, Jasper, and Horace devise a scheme to retrieve it— involving a fake-out robbery during one of the Baroness’s many parties where Estella becomes Cruella, acting as a distraction with one flaming collage dress after another.
If this is supposed to be the low point of Emma Stone’s career, it’s far more fun than most Oscar-winning performances. She nails her British accent, looks great in the costumes and makeup, and camps nearly every scene when she’s not defaulting to the usual Emma-Stonisms— nervously apologizing and over-thanking the Baroness. While I may be perplexed at how this whole thing cost $100 million, they certainly didn’t skimp on the dresses— some of which made my jaw hit the floor four or five times. Take this as the uncultured praise it may be, but I had big fun seeing Emma Stone turn into a fashionista Harley Quinn, wondering what outfit she’d crash the party with next— though I don’t know anything about fashion, so mark me as easy to impress. The budget likely went to the costumes, the most realistic CGI dogs in any live-action movie to date, and the soundtrack— which, while it has highlights, mainly serves as an indictment of Craig Gillespie’s treatment of music. It’s laden with tired needle drops from front to back, pulling Nina Simone’s Feeling Good out as a boss-bitch anthem like it’s earned the stones to recontextualize that track. Paul Walter Hauser keeps getting better with each film, his accent game isn’t too shabby, and Emma Thompson is having too much fun as the icy, temperamental Baroness on a permanent ego trip.
The last bit of praise I’ll offer before the spoilers knock down the whole house of cards is that the golden moth egg dress heist is genuinely funny. Making an entire dress out of moth eggs, faking a robbery so it would get locked in a vault— only to unleash a moth fiesta inside— is a satisfying middle finger to an authoritarian. Emma Thompson’s reaction sold the hell out of that moment.
But the moral chandelier starts to snap when Cruella strolls up with a spotted coat and her cohorts exchange concerned looks. I realized, Oh yeah, we’re not getting away from the dog-killing issue, are we? Thankfully, the costume is a fake-out— but a foreboding one. Later, the Baroness deduces that Estella and Cruella are one and the same, ties up Cruella, Jasper, and Horace, and burns their apartment down— with Cruella threatening to kill her and your dogs as she leaves. Estella barely escapes with help from the Baroness’s valet, John (by the strength of Mark Strong), who reveals that the brooch is a key to a box containing her birth records. Turns out the Baroness was Estella’s biological mother all along— giving her away to Catherine so she could focus on her career (in a flashback that commits the sin of showing me a version of Mark Strong with hair).
From here, any social, political, or philosophical commentary is tossed out so the script can double down on revenge. The paternal connection twist was predictable, but it’s still a lesser sin than trying to pass off Thomas Wayne as the Joker’s father. Yet the whole thing psyches out my main fear— that Cruella would turn into a dog killer— without addressing what kind of character is left in the absence of that extra sin. Without it, she’s just inherited her mother’s toxicity and talents. Capitalist girlbossing and rainbow virtue-signaling are hollow enough without Disney’s contributions to the neoliberal circlejerk, but this reductive hereditary nonsense blows the whole leg off.
The further it goes, the harder it is to figure out who this was made for— aside from young girls into black-and-white. Unless this version of Cruella becomes as misunderstood as those who look up to Rick Sanchez and Walter White, I can’t imagine kids sitting through a crime thriller with adults fighting over fashion. It’s not selling any fresh political takes, but at least it doesn’t pretend to— unlike Joker. But in the absence of ideology, what’s left is franchise-padding— buying time before Disney has to remind everyone who this character really becomes. And if that’s not addressed, then I’m left asking the same question I had at the start:
“Who really is Cruella?”
2 ½ stars for the performances, costumes, and general digestibility— but overall pointless.
