Looking California and Feeling Minnesota - Episode 39: Cruella

On this episode Barry and I get dressed up for our date with DISNEY's Cruella, starring Emma Stone. This barn burner of an episode contains discussions on topics as varied as wasting $200 million on CGI dogs, the lost opportunity of a lady Joker and the Disney classics The Great Locomotive Chase and The Mandalorian.

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota - Episode 39: Cruella

Thanks for listening!

©2021

Cruella: Review and Commentary

****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!****

My Rating: 2 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT. Really not much of interest in this big budget misfire.

Cruella is the perfect kid’s movie for a culture that celebrates cruelty and malignant megalomania

Disney has discarded the old princess narrative and under the guise of self-empowerment are now teaching generations of young girls to embrace self-serving toxicity.

In the new Disney movie Cruella the Rolling Stones classic Sympathy for the Devil plays over the film’s final scene, which felt a bit too on the nose for the origin story of a notorious character that will go on to attempt to skin puppies for the sake of fashion.

Cruella, of course, is Cruella de Vil, the infamous arch villain of the iconic animated film One Hundred and One Dalmatians. With this new, live-action, reimagined reboot starring Emma Stone we discover why Cruella hates dalmatians so much and how she rose to power.

What we really learn though is that the suits at Disney will go to any lengths to plumb the depths of their intellectual property vault to make money and corrode the culture.

Cruella, whose real name is Estella, is at first set in a sort of Dickensian London, where we learn of her troubled childhood. The film then magically shifts into the stylishly swinging London of the 60’s and 70’s where Estella graduates from good girl gone bad to bad girl grown up.

The soundtrack, which is easily the best part of the movie, reflects that time period as it features an abundance of classics from The Doors, Queen, Nina Simone, ELO, Tina Turner, The Clash and the aforementioned Stones.

Unfortunately, like seemingly all Disney films, Cruella is a shameless money grab in the form of a two hour and fourteen-minute advertisement for Disney’s vast catalogue of past movie hits and its newfound woke politics.

Director Craig Gillespie has experience making movies about cartoonishly villainous women, as evidenced by his terrific film I, Tonya, about disgraced figure skater Tonya Harding, but on Cruella he seems desperately out of place.

The film’s star, Emma Stone, doesn’t fare much better. Stone is a likeable screen presence, but she is all bark and no bite as Cruella, as the thread bare script makes little human sense and reduces her acting to histrionics.

The lone bright spot in the cast though is Paul Walter Hauser who is glorious as always as the bumbling buffoon Horace Badun. The rotund Hauser is quickly becoming one of the best scene stealers and actors in the business.

The film’s massive $200 million budget doesn’t translate into stunning visuals either, as the film looks just ok and lacks any remarkable cinematic moments. It’s also painfully derivative, generously borrowing from other, much better films like The Devil Wears Prada, Joker, The Thomas Crown Affair and V for Vendetta.

The biggest problem with Cruella though is that it can’t quite figure out what exactly it wants to be. It’s too dark to be for kids and too silly to be for adults. Yet despite the movie’s PG13 rating, it would appear from the movie’s rather ludicrous plot and minimal character development that the target audience is impressionable pre-teen girls, which is unfortunate since the film’s moral perspective is less than idyllic.

Even though there are shades of Cinderella in Cruella, there are certainly no princesses to be found. The old days of the Disney princess are long gone and some may say good riddance, but now the corporate behemoth Mickey Mouse built is pivoting to not just churning out generic girl power movies, but with Cruella, bad-girl girl power movies.

This is a bad girl versus bad girl movie, a battle of the bitches if you will, where Cruella (Emma Stone) faces off against her fashion designer nemesis Baroness von Hellman (Emma Thompson – doing a second-rate Meryl Streep imitation), with the most-cruel and conniving female fashionista winning the stylish bad girl championship crown with belt to match.

I’m old enough to remember when Joker came out in 2019 and hysterical establishment critics shrieked in horror, declaring it dangerous because Joker was the “patron saint of incels” who’d inspire white men to violence. Joker was rated R and obviously geared towards adults, but Cruella? It’s for 10 year-old girls is designed under the guise of self-empowerment to encourage the selfish, bitchy and viciously toxic behavior of brats of all ages.

And don’t be fooled, Disney knows exactly what it’s doing as it clearly understands full well the power of pop culture to persuade, which is why it wouldn’t allow Stone to smoke as Cruella despite that being a signature trait of the character.

God only knows what deleterious effect Cruella will have on generations of girls in a nation already filled with a plethora of narcissistic Karen De Vils.

Of course, Cruella is inoculated against that sort of moral and/or cultural criticism from mainstream critics because it has the “proper” woke perspective and a “diverse” and “inclusive” cast where most of the “heroes” are women, minorities or both.

Among these heroes are Cruella, a genius taking on the small-minded patriarchy, Anita, the black female gossip columnist defiantly helping Cruella’s cause, Artie, the gay fashionista who fights for all things fabulous, and Jasper, Cruella’s right-hand person of color.

Ultimately, there’s nothing wrong with telling a story about an anti-hero or villain. These stories can have great value in that they help a culture assimilate its shadow and ultimately find catharsis. Joker is a perfect example of this, and so could be Cruella if it were made for adults.

Cruella though is a sign of a culture intent on destroying itself as it’s a kid’s movie that teaches young girls to identify with and have sympathy for this undeniably immoral and malignant megalomaniacal she-devil, all while it celebrates cruelty.

I guess a corrosive kid’s movie like Cruella was inevitable since we live in a popular, political and social culture populated with so many cruel, immoral, malignantly megalomaniacal adults. As the saying goes “you get what you pay for”…which is why I definitely wouldn’t recommend paying for Cruella.

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2021

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 23 - Richard Jewell

On today’s podcast Barry and I take a look at the 2019 Clint Eastwood film, Richard Jewell. On the episode we discuss the hopefully soon-to-be discovered, glorious genius of the film’s star Paul Walter Hauser, as well as the reliable acting brilliance of Kathy Bates and Sam Rockwell. In addition we wrestle with the often-times frustrating nature of Clint Eastwood’s directing approach and the never ending mystery of Jon Hamm.

LOOKING CALIFORNIA AND FEELING MINNESOTA: EPISODE 23 - RICHARD JEWELL

Thank you for listening!

©2020