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‘Cruella’ a delightful, dazzling fashion-mad feast - Boston Herald

Emma Thompson as the Baroness and Andrew Leung as Jeffery in Disney’s live-action, “Cruella.” (Laurie Sparham/Disney/TNS)

MOVIE REVIEW

“CRUELLA”

Rated PG-13. On Disney+ and at the AMC Boston Common, AMC South Bay, Regal Fenway, Landmark Kendall Square and the Capitol Theater in Arlington.

Grade: A-

A delightful, live-action cartoon, “Cruella” is a blast, a gripping “supervillain” origin story and a triumph for “I,Tonya” director Craig Gillespie. Academy award-winner Emma Stone delivers another glittering performance as the title character, a young woman who is “bad, and a little mad.” Here, she was born Estella, perhaps named for the girl Miss Havisham trains to break men’s hearts in Charles Dickens’ “Great Expectations.” Estella is a fashion-mad outcast at her girls’ school with the black-and-white-colored hair of a skunk, which her mother (Emily Beecham) makes her dye red. Cruella only “appears” irregularly at school.

As a young adult in ’70s London, after the death of her mother in a fall off a cliff, shoved by a trio of dalmatians, a bereft Estella is adopted by two young thieves named Jasper (Joel Fry of the recent “In the Earth”) and Horace (Michigan-born Paul Walter Hauser in an impressive comic turn). The three of them are like the child thieves of — again — Dickens’ “Oliver Twist.” In fact the entire film, scripted by Dana Fox, Tony McNamara and four others, is infused with Dickensian characters, the music of the Swinging Sixties (and beyond) and the fashion scene of London’s fabled West End. Have I mentioned the many dogs, who are major players in the film, including a one-eyed chihuahua named Wink. The soundtrack, featuring Supertramp, the Doors, Nina Simone, Ohio Players and the Clash, is a main character in the film, which is almost a musical. The same is true of the costumes by Academy Award winner Jenny Beavan (“Mad Max: Fury Road”), especially the frequently punk extravaganzas gloriously worn by Stone herself. Her make-up includes the stenciled words “The Future” spray-painted on her face like a black mask.

One-time toilet scrubber Estella/Cruella gets hired by fashion legend the Baroness (a marvelous Emma Thompson), whose meanness and awfulness make “The Devil Wears Prada” look like “Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm.” The Baroness recognizes “something” in Estella, whose designs are in fact better than hers, and the two develop an evil mother/unstable daughter relationship. When the Baroness hurts Estella, Cruella emerges to institute a War of the Fashion Designers and schemes with Jasper and Horace to manufacture publicity stunts in which Cruella upstages her rival.

The film “Cruella” becomes an even more psychotic and much more colorful version of “The Phantom Thread.” Yes, there is a ball at which Wink appears disguised as a large rat. The action involves a jeweled necklace belonging to Estella’s mother, and a plot twist we should have seen coming. But who cares about plot when there is so much stunning eye candy to behold? The London police tool around town in packs of vintage, pastel-colored Sunbeams. At one Baroness fashion event, all the invitees arrive in Cruella drag, even – shiver me timbers – Horace. The most glorious vision of all in the film is probably Cruella’s/Stone’s Gollum-sized blue eyes. Best actress Oscar winner Stone (“La La Land”) delivers a wonderfully deranged comic performance in what is sure to be a signature role. In many ways, “Cruella” is the comic version of “Joker.” Despair and cruelty dance and sing for us. But they are never offstage. The film ends suitably with a James Bond-like credit sequence. Stone’s Cruella has been born, and the soundtrack cues up “Sympathy for the Devil.” Or more correctly “the de Vil.”

(“Cruella” contains violence and mature themes.)

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‘Cruella’ a delightful, dazzling fashion-mad feast - Boston Herald
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