Bringing the classic fairy tale Cinderella back to the big screen as a live action feature presents many exciting possibilities. It is a story that could benefit from some updating. Or alternatively, the movie might have embraced the darker dimensions of the original Grimm tale. But the approach that Disney's Cinderella takes is the least enticing of the options. It is basically a narrative expansion of their classic animated feature, minus the talking animals and exuberant musical sequences. It is a shiny, sparkly feature, but it is an inferior product that struggles to justify its existence.
The movie starts off much earlier, tracing the happy childhood of Ella (Lily James in adulthood) and her parents in their country estate. But then her mother dies, leaving a hole in their family. Her father remarries, and then dies while away on business soon after. This leaves Ella with her stepmother (Cate Blanchett) and her two stepsisters, none of whom are very fond of Ella and her ways. They take advantage of her, basically turning her into a servant. They dub her Cinderella one morning after she slept on the floor beside the dying embers of the hearth.
The rest of the story, everyone already knows. The sole real addition the film makes to this a story is a scene where Ella meets the Prince (Richard Madden) prior to the ball. It is the one concession to modern sensibilities, the film attempting to establish a friendly rapport between the two instead of just having them fall in love at first sight. But it isn't really anything substantial. When the film's nominal villains point out that the Prince is proclaiming love for a girl he just met for five minutes in a forest, the criticism lands home. The Prince's contention that he is choosing love rings pretty hollow.
If the film wasn't going to change things substantially, then it might have been better just sticking to fairy tale logic. The small intrusion of this one niggling piece of business just makes the romance seem all the more dubious. But this is apparently the price of going live action. What makes it on screen is a less fun version of the cartoon, a movie that has the same simplistic narrative but functions without the benefit of the musical numbers, or the visual charm of the hand drawn animation.
Because of much visual panache as director Kenneth Branagh brings to the movie, it still feels like any other VFX spectacle. It's impressive at points, but it isn't particularly memorable. The cast is altogether quite charming, with Lily James making a lot out of a role that doesn't really offer much complexity. Cate Blanchett is the highlight of this cast, even though the role is still severely underwritten. There is an attempt to deepen the pathos of the wicked stepmother, but in the end the film doesn't really commit to making her more of a sympathetic character.
That kind of sums up what Cinderella is. There are attempts at turning the story into something different, at punching it up so that it becomes more than a retread. But the attempt only goes so far. In the end, this is just another example of what Disney has been calling "brand investments." It doesn't want to stray too far from what's already been done, since that could harm the brand. And that kind of thinking can rarely make for good cinema. That's a limitation that doesn't at all foster creative thinking.
My Rating:
