'Cinderella' starring Camila Cabello is more manipulative than magical
Like so many things in 2021, Prime Video’s Cinderella is a bippity boppity bummer.
With pop star Camila Cabello as the titular princess and the writer-producer behind the Pitch Perfect trilogy at the helm, you’d think Kay Cannon’s adaptation of this classic fairytale would be magical — an incandescent blend of glittery costumes and contemporary jams enchanting enough to transport you away from our cursed reality.
But like a glass slipper that won’t quite make it over your heel, this Cinderella never gets comfortable enough to take you anywhere. From the beginning, it instead comes off as cloyingly calculated, with an opening number that captures so much of what doesn’t work about its approach.
“Once upon a time…” fairy god person Billie Porter begins, before launching into a smarmy monologue all about how villagers in this “old-fashioned” kingdom are stuck in a rut. But just as the prescience of that particular premise settles in (A society where everything kind of sucks, has for years, and nothing is changing? Tag yourself!) a mash-up of Janet Jackson’s “Rhythm Nation” and Des’ree’s “You Gotta Be” arrives as anachronistic as — and no more subtle than — a bulldozer.
With breakdancing laborers of unspecified professions spinning shovels in the town square, it’s easy to see what the movie was going for: A feel-good start to a feel-good movie that, if you just give it the next 1 hour and 53 minutes of your time, will make you feel good. Still, it’s a weird choice. As the town lights up with intricate choreography and strong-lunged chorus members belting ‘90s R&B, the sense that everything is just fine and dandy in this picture book world clashes with the reality just described to us.
The lack of stakes continues as we’re introduced to Ella’s homelife, where her not-so-wicked stepmother Vivian, played by Idina Menzel, presents as vicious as a declawed house cat. In this telling, Vivian is more concerned with Ella being married off alongside her daughters Malvolia and Narissa, played by Maddie Baillio and Charlotte Spencer, than with her ungrateful stepchild cleaning the cinder. So instead of letting Menzel at the merciless cruelty tapped by Cate Blanchett in Disney’s 2015 version, she’s reduced to a half-baked character with little purpose outside of covering Madonna’s “Material Girl” in the second act.
Ostensibly, defanging the wicked step family allows this story’s main conflict — that women are banned from conducting business in the kingdom, and Cinderella wants to open a dress shop — shine brighter. But as countless critics on social media have already pointed out, that #GirlBoss premise collapses under the weight of its remarkably ill-advised reasoning fast, and sacrificing the most fun acting opportunity in this story wasn’t worth it.
It’s these miscalculations that make Cinderella feel disingenuous. There are fun moments, sure — namely, Pierce Brosnan badly serenading his queen Minnie Driver; Nicholas Galitzine’s Prince Charming having an earring; and a bunch of shenanigans with talking mice, played by James Corden, Romesh Ranganathan, and James Acaster. Plus, Cabello brings a tenacious commitment to her role you have no choice but to admire, and Porter is, as always, a flawless creature of which we are not worthy.
But for every other moment you should be seeing stars in your eyes, marveling at the wonder of this fantastical fairytale world, Cinderella presents you with bold decisions that will make you ask “Why did they do that?” long before you even care about “How?”
Inoffensively fine but never good, this Cinderella is yet another take on a classic with nothing new to say. Sure, you’ll be reminded that women should have the right to own property. But if that passes for a winning fairytale in 2021, we’re in real trouble.
Cinderella (2021) is now streaming on Amazon Prime Video.
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