Cruella
Directed by Craig Gillespie
Produced by Andrew Gunn, Marc Platt, Kristin Burr
Screenplay by Dana Fox, Tony McNamara
Story by Aline Brosh McKenna, Kelly Marcel, Steve Zissis
Based on The Hundred and One Dalmatians by Dodie Smith
Starring Emma Stone, Emma Thompson, Joel Fry, Paul Walter Hauser, Emily Beecham, Kirby Howell-Baptiste, Mark Strong
If there’s two types of movies the Brits excel at, it’s the comedy, and the caper. They’re at their best when they combine the two. Perfidy and panache permeate the productions. Although they rarely depend on cheap alliteration. Style and wit are the watchwords in an English caper movie. The climax has to be unforeseen and extremely clever. For points, it should be ironic, perhaps with a dash of cynicism and a sense that extremely rough justice was served.
The genre, while not unknown in American film, is undermined by Hollywood’s aversion toward taxing the intellect of its audience, and a propensity toward action rather than plot twists. It does happen, and the odds of it happening are greatly improved if any production involves the Coen Brothers and/or George Clooney.
Disney can do comedy, of course, but it’s a different sort of comedy. It’s usually not particularly sophisticated or subtle, normally necessary ingredients in a caper comedy.
Until Cruella. This live-action feature was an unexpected delight!
They brought the heavy guns in. Britain’s two Emmas, for starters. Emma Stone was marvelous as the title character, and Emma Thompson was her mentor and eventually her rival. They added one of England’s best comedians, Joel Fry, to be henchman #1, and a very British-sounding fellow from Grand Rapids, Michigan, Paul Walter Hauser, as henchman #2. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that Hauser studied Keeping Up Appearances and based his character on the cheerfully dissolute Onslow.
Cruella de Vil was, of course, the arch-villainess in A Hundred and One Dalmations, Disney’s hit animated feature from 1961. Voiced by Betty Lou Gerson, she is one of the most memorable of all Disney heavies. When I heard that Cruella would explore the backstory and personality of Cruella, I wondered if, as so often happens when writers succumb to the temptation of humanizing their characters, Cruella’s storied status might be diminished. Villains, as a rule, are at their scariest when they are remote and unapproachable. I needn’t have worried.
While the story begins in the London of Mary Quant, the soundtrack has a glorious disregard for chronology, beginning with that well-known 1964 band, Supertramp. Helliwell and the rest were still all in short pants at that point. But the music was picked with a clever eye to events in the film. It adds to the high humor.
Stone does a brilliant job of keeping her character vicious, bordering on psychotic, pausing only a couple of times to question her sanity and/or tactics, and then shrugging and proceeding full speed ahead. That she also makes the character likeable and approachable is a testament to her formidable acting skills. Thompson’s character is clearly overmatched, but not willing to give ground without a monster fight. The tactics and countertactics, whilst improbable, are utterly hilarious and will leave you laughing out loud over and over. I suspect this one is destined to be a cult classic.
It’s out of character for Disney, but it succeeds brilliantly.