by Nick Ferro, Contributing Writer
Family movie night this week was an interesting one. Its not often that we are able to watch a brand new movie at home together. Typically, we watch a movie that’s an old classic or something newer that I’ve pre-screened, but with the new Cinderella being rated PG and “Elsa” herself playing the role of “evil stepmother,” it wasn’t hard to convince the family to give it a whirl. Of course, with a new movie like this, I was bombarded with a plethora of questions: “will they sing?” — yes. “Will they have the same songs from the cartoon?” — no. “Why is Cinderella not blonde” —because she’s not. “Is Emma Stone in it?” — unfortunately, no. “Will there be mice?” — Yes! For goodness’ sake, enough questions. Just watch the movie!! So, we sat down for a fun family movie night full of music and dancing both in the movie and my living room.
Cinderella, starring Camila Cabello as Ella and Idina Menzel as Vivian, the “evil” stepmother, is a quasi-new telling of the classic tale. You have the basic premise: Ella lives with her stepmother and stepsisters in a cottage where she does the chores and waits on her family like a servant (at least in the first scene) and has a passion for dress making. She hopes to one day own her own dress making business in the town square. Meanwhile, Prince Robert (Nicholas Galitzine) is being forced by his father, King Rowan (Pierce Brosnan), to get married so he can one day rule the kingdom. Of course, the prince doesn’t want to rule the kingdom and get married, he wants to do… something? I’m not sure what his motivations were, but rest assured, they don’t matter. The king decides to throw a ball in the hopes that the prince will find someone to marry, but when they make this royal announcement, the prince sees Ella and it’s love at first sight. Enter the Aladdin portion of the story where the prince dons a disguise of a commoner to go into the village and find Ella to personally invite her to the ball. The story goes on from there as you might expect. However, there are some twists and turns along the way. These changes extend the third act and update the story to give Ella a more empowering ending for modern audiences. I won’t spoil them here because I do think these additions make this version worth checking out, even if it may not be for everyone.
Starting with some elements that I enjoyed, Cinderella has quite a fun atmosphere. It kicks off with a mashup song that fans of Glee will be stylistically familiar with, and lets you know the tone of the movie right away. I’m not always a fan of integrating pop songs into musical tales, so discovering this put me on alert. The choices made for the music include Janet Jackson, Queen, Madonna, Earth, Wind and Fire, and much more. The songs chosen are fun and will get your feet tapping and I overall enjoyed them, but I did have some qualms with them, which I’ll touch on later. The original music in the film stood out to me more — the songs were catchy and well written. I would have preferred the percentage of original music to have been higher than the pop music.
I felt like the direction and writing by Kay Cannon was what gave this version of the tale the edge that it needed with a surprising amount of humor reminiscent to her previous work, specifically Blockers and New Girl. This movie is very funny. Nothing sent me into hysterics, but many one-off jokes or side comments kept me chuckling throughout. There was one particularly meta joke that Cinderella has regarding her awareness to being in a musical that gave me a big laugh. I really enjoyed the casting choices for this movie as well. Everyone fit their role and really understood the tone of the movie they were in, you could tell they were having fun which in turn shone through in their performances.
Performance-wise Cabello is a standout because, woah boy, that girl can sing! She has several songs throughout and her songs were my favorite moments of the movie. The movie took good advantage of its musical talents. Likewise, Menzel crushes her two big songs despite both being unnecessary for the story, but they were so good I wouldn’t want them to be cut. Listening to her sing is always a delight. I know what you’re thinking: “Nick, please tell us — does Pierce Brosnan get to sing? He was our favorite part of Mama Mia!” *wink* Well, the answer is yes, but the movie knew who the singing talents were, and they used Brosnan’s talents accordingly and amusingly. Brosnan was perfect as the king. He had some good serious “kingly” moments and played the straight man to the more comedic prince, but also had some great humorous moments. He even got a small subplot with the queen, played by the criminally under used Minnie Driver. She was given one monologue towards the end, which she nailed, that played a key part in the story, but otherwise I was disappointed in how little screen time she received. Finally, playing Cinderella’s “Fabulous Godmother” was Billy Porter who played the role to perfection. As I mentioned before, the movie had a bit of an Aladdin feel, and Billy Porter brought the “genie” aspect of that movie to this one which resulted in a really playful and fun performance. It was a shame that he couldn’t be in more of the movie.
One thing that disappointed me with this version of the story was its lack of originality. I know that being in the public domain is going to hinder the options you have when adapting a story as old as this, but it was definitely a detriment here. This movie was 80% Ella Enchanted in both tone and humor. Of course, Minnie Driver was given much more to do in that film and the use of Queen’s Somebody to Love didn’t help to keep me from seeing the comparisons. I kept thinking this movie felt like Glee or Pitch Perfect or 30 Rock, and it was distracting and kept me from really loving this version. I also felt that the song choices, while incredibly popular and fun, were very uninspired. It’s weird because I loved pretty much all of the song choices and musical numbers, but the songs were so “basic,” as the kids would say. It felt like not a lot of thought went into the songs used.
But the worst part of this movie, which added to the runtime unnecessarily, was the inclusion of the talking mice, played by two very funny comedians and James Corden. One would think when you see James Acaster and Romesh Ranganathan in a cast list, “they must have something really special in mind for these guys!” In this case you would be wrong and quite disappointed. The scenes with the mice felt like tacked on afterthoughts. Most of the lines were given to James Corden and best he could do was a poop joke. Between their lack of actual comedy and the incredibly bad CGI, I can’t for the life of me figure out why they wouldn’t have let these two incredibly funny guys come up with their own dialogue.
Was family movie night a success? Yes, I believe it was. My eight-year-old, after her rousing game of 20 questions at the beginning, declared loudly when it was over: “I loved it!” And my six-year-old couldn’t stop dancing during the ballroom scene where they mashed up “Whatta Man” by Salt-N-Pepa and “Seven Army Nation” by White Stripes. That scene spoke to her on a level that added to our enjoyment. As for my wife and me, we had a good time with the movie and a fun time enjoying the children having fun watching. I don’t know if I’d revisit this one often, but if the kids wanted to throw it on, I wouldn’t be opposed. There was something unique about this version that I think speaks to why we all had a good time. The kids and teens were written in a way that felt like they were in a modern Disney Channel original movie, while the adults were clearly written to be in a proper period piece. You would think these two styles would clash, and I’m sure to some it will. But to me, this added to the humor of the movie and to an underlying theme. What works for one generation might not work for the next, but if you are open to change you can find a way to make everyone happy. If this sounds like something you’d like, then don’t pass up this version of Cinderella.
Grade B-
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