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Did you ever wonder how Cruella De Vil, the vampy fiend from Disney's "101 Dalmatians," became evil enough to want to kill puppies and skin them for fur coats? You didn't? Ah, well—there's a movie about it, "Cruella." It stars two Oscar-winning actresses, runs two hours and 14 minutes, and reportedly cost $200 million, a good chunk of it spent on an expansive soundtrack of familiar sixties and seventies pop songs. It never answers the burning question posed by its own existence, though: what new information could possibly make us sympathize with the original movie's nuclear family-loathing, wannabe-dog-killing monster? The further away from "Cruella" that you get, the more its connection to "101 Dalmatians" seems a cynical attempt to leash an existing Disney intellectual property to a story that has no organic connection with it.

Directed by Craig Gillespie —who does a discount Scorsese, keeping the camera flying and the phonograph needles dropping, much as he did in " I, Tonya "—"Cruella" awkwardly combines a couple of popular modes. One is the origin story of a long-lived, brand-name character that didn't need an origin story: think " Solo: A Star Wars Story ," " Pan ," and the third Indiana Jones (the opening sequence of “The Last Crusade" showed Indy acquiring his whip, his chin scar, his hat, and his fear of snakes in the space of 10 minutes). 

The other mode is the "give the Devil his due" story, represented on TV by dramas such as " Bates Motel " and "Ratched" and in cinema, with greater or lesser degrees of artistry, by Rob Zombie's "Halloween" remakes, which explored the abusive childhood of serial killer Michael Myers; by the billion-dollar grossing, Oscar-winning " Joker "; by Tim Burton's " Charlie and the Chocolate Factory ," which gave Roald Dahl's inscrutable, faintly sinister clown Willy Wonka a tragic childhood; by the " Maleficent " films (the first of which had soul, at least); and by Broadway's Wicked , which presented the Wicked Witch as a victim of bigotry who embraced her own stereotype and used it as a weapon against tormenters. 

The "Cruella" screenplay is in that vein, or sometimes it tries to be. But it's a mess, and it often seems to pause to remind itself that it's supposed to have something to do with "101 Dalmatians." The script is credited to  Dana Fox and Tony McNamara , from a story by Aline Brosh McKenna , Kelly Marcel , and Steve Zissis . But although it was theoretically inspired by a Disney cartoon feature adapted from Dodie Smith's book, you could change the heroine's name and take out a handful of iconic production design elements (such as Cruella's yin-yang hair and Bentley roadster, and the spotted dogs) and have a serviceable feature in the vein of " Matilda ," " Madeline ," or " Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events "—or, for that matter, countless Charles Dickens film adaptations, wherein a plucky child or teenager navigates a world of useless or treacherous adults, becoming embroiled in plots to steal this object or expose that bad person.

Far from wanting to kill and skin dogs, a pre-Cruella girl named Estella ( Emma Stone ) owns one and dotes on it. As the story unfolds, we never see her being cruel to an animal or even saying an unkind word about them. She blames Dalmatians for the accidental death of her mother, a poor laundrywoman played by Emily Beecham ; but that's more of a reflexive loathing, like hating the ocean if you'd lost a loved one to drowning. It's not as if she's sworn vengeance against canines generally. Our heroine (or antiheroine) is a sassy, plucky orphan who overcomes a life of deprivation on London's swingin' streets, joining up with a couple of buddies, Jasper ( Joel Fry ) and Horace (Paul Walter Hauser) and running grifts and scams. A brilliant draftswoman with an eye for style, Estella gets a job at a big department store. In a fit of pique, she reconfigures a shop window display because it showcases a gown she thinks is ugly (altering it in the process), and is summarily hired by the store's biggest vendor, fashion designer Baroness von Hellman ( Emma Thompson ). The Baroness is a staff-abusing control freak who nevertheless becomes the closest thing to a mentor and mother that Estella has had since her own mum's death. 

Through a combination of incidents too tangled to recount here, the story morphs into an " All About Eve " riff about intergenerational rivalry between women in a creative workplace. Estella becomes increasingly resentful of the Baroness abusing her and stealing her glory; in time, she gradually learns what a vile person the Baroness is, and vows to humiliate and destroy her and usurp her spot as the top fashionista in London. All in all, not a bad setup for a knockabout comedy-drama set in what feels like an alternate universe—one that's more clever and colorful than the one we're stuck with, although Jasper and Fry never quite feel like more than obligatory sidekicks, and Cruella is given a childhood best friend, Maya ( Kirby Howell-Baptiste ), a photojournalist and gossip columnist who is reduced to the status of a plot device in the film's second half.

But Estella needs to become Cruella De Vil, just as Arthur Fleck had to become the Joker and Anakin Skywalker had to become Darth Vader, otherwise the production can't end up in theaters and on Disney+. And so "Cruella," much like the half-charming, half-pointless "Solo," has to shoehorn bits of lore and backstory and fanwankery into the narrative, none more risible than the moment where the heroine decides that Cruella needs an equally colorful last name and takes it from a certain model of automobile. Did we need that? Isn't the wordplay on "Devil" and "da vil(lain)" sufficient? Apparently not, and of course, young children are going to eat that sort of thing right up, even though it’s (amazingly) even worse than the scene in "Solo" where the intergalactic customs official assigns the hero his last name because he's traveling alone.

It's a bummer, really, because—like many a "How did this person become the character we already know?" films—"Cruella" is filled with situations, set pieces, and moments of characterization and performance that suggest it had everything required to stand on its own two high-heeled feet, minus the guardrails of intellectual property owned by the largest entertainment conglomerate the world has ever seen. 

Estella's rightful desire to punish a bad person, for example, is intertwined with her drive to succeed in business, a touch of psychological complexity that the script isn't interested in unpacking because it already has its hands full making Estella a lively character in her own right and simultaneously setting her up to become Cruella de Vil—a transformation that makes increasingly less sense the more you learn about the character. A pity, that. People in real life often do good things for bad reasons and vice versa, or use their trauma as an excuse to lower themselves to the level of the person they've decided is (to quote Bond's nemesis Blofeld) the author of all their pain. Because the film can’t, or won’t, deal with the material that’s  right in front of it, it comes across seeming as if it wants credit for a sophistication it does not possess.

There's no denying that "Cruella" is stylish and kinetic, with a nasty edge that's unusual for a recent Disney live-action feature. But it's also exhausting, disorganized, and frustratingly inert, considering how hard it works to assure you that it's thrilling and cheeky. You get forty minutes into it and realize the main story hasn't started yet. Were it not for the acrobatic camerawork, the game lead performances by two Emmas, and the parade of eye-popping costumes by  Jenny Beavan —eighty knockouts in 134 minutes, not counting the period-inspired background garb on the extras—it would be a nonsensical heap of broken images, as aesthetically bankrupt as " Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker " and the first " Suicide Squad ." 

More vexing is the film’s reluctance to own the fact that—as one of many obvious song cues assure us—it has Sympathy for the Devil. She's not really the devil—not even remotely, as the script keeps telling us—but she is an awful person in many ways, and we are expected to adore her because the Baroness is so much worse.

The movie hits a giddy peak in its final act when it becomes a contest of wills. It’s here that the leads cut loose. Thompson in particular achieves cartoonish grandiosity, a supervillain armored in haute couture. Every head tilt, sneer, and side-eye is a non-physical assault on the Baroness' enemies and underlings, some of who don't realize they've been symbolically executed until their heads hit the basket. The effect is similar to what Cate Blanchett achieved in " Thor: Ragnarok ," another film where the costumes were practically giving performances of their own, and the smartest actors in the cast knew how to merge with them.

But "Cruella" never embraces darkness in the way it keeps threatening to. There's nothing in this film remotely as powerful as the moment in the first "Maleficent" when the heroine awakens on a hilltop after spending the night with a duplicitous man and finds that her wings have been chopped off. It's an atrocity that reads as a sexual and psychological assault even though the movie never frames it that way, and it powers us through the rest of the story, freeing us to root for a traumatized, outcast monster. "Maleficent" eventually compromises, too, pulling back from its heroine's grimmest tendencies. But it's still as close as Disney has gotten to letting Satan footnote the Bible, and it looks better every time the studio releases something like "Cruella," a movie that flinches from its own premise, even as it looks great doing it.

"Cruella" will release simultaneously in theaters and on Disney+ with Premier Access for a onetime additional fee on Friday, May 28.

Matt Zoller Seitz

Matt Zoller Seitz is the Editor at Large of RogerEbert.com, TV critic for New York Magazine and Vulture.com, and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in criticism.

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Film Credits

Cruella (2021)

Rated PG-13 for some violence and thematic elements.

134 minutes

Emma Stone as Cruella de Vil / Estella

Emma Thompson as Baroness von Hellman

Mark Strong as Boris

Joel Fry as Jasper

Paul Walter Hauser as Horace

Emily Beecham as Catherine

Kirby Howell-Baptiste as Anita

Jamie Demetriou as Gerald

John McCrea as Artie

Abraham Popoola as George

• Craig Gillespie

Writer (based upon the novel "One Hundred and One Dalmatians" by)

• Dodie Smith

Writer (story by)

• Aline Brosh McKenna
• Kelly Marcel
• Steve Zissis
• Tony McNamara

Cinematographer

• Nicolas Karakatsanis
• Tatiana S. Riegel
• Nicholas Britell

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Common sense media reviewers.

Disney villain is de Vilishly delightful, daring, and dark.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

Clear themes of friendship, teamwork, perseverance

Estella is fearless, working hard and persevering

Murder and murderous intent. A mother falls to her

"Hell" is seen on a sign, referring to a place. "S

Elaborate parties and stylish couture gowns repres

Swigs from a decanter imply drinking and drunkenne

Parents need to know that Cruella is Disney's stylish but dark live-action origin story about the dog-napping villain from Disney's 1961 classic 101 Dalmatians . Set in the early 1970s, it attempts to explain Cruella's (Emma Stone) nefarious behavior in a way that will spark empathy in viewers. Think…

Positive Messages

Clear themes of friendship, teamwork, perseverance, resilience -- but, still, at heart it's a story about trauma and revenge. Potentially problematic messages about identity and tying someone's "true" nature to their parental deeds.

Positive Role Models

Estella is fearless, working hard and persevering to achieve her goals -- but many of those goals are iffy (revenge, theft, etc.); she's destined, it seems, for villainy. Jasper and Horace are loyal friends. The Baroness is unrepentantly cold, calculating, selfish, manipulative. Positive representations include racially diverse supporting characters (a welcome update from previous films involving these characters) and one representing the LGBTQ+ community.

Violence & Scariness

Murder and murderous intent. A mother falls to her death on camera while her child watches (impact not shown). Main character in deep peril, with death assumed by others at one point and implied at another. Attack dogs put characters in peril, snapping and snarling. A couple of punches and (comedic) tackles. An intentionally set fire. Shock device used for comic effect. Cruel/abusive behavior, both in present and past. Arguing. Children bully a girl because she's different.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

"Hell" is seen on a sign, referring to a place. "Stupid," "psycho," "farts." One character calls others "short" and "fat."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Products & Purchases

Elaborate parties and stylish couture gowns represent a posh lifestyle.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Swigs from a decanter imply drinking and drunkenness, which ultimately lead to positive consequences for the character involved. Champagne served at parties and celebrations.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that Cruella is Disney's stylish but dark live-action origin story about the dog-napping villain from Disney's 1961 classic 101 Dalmatians . Set in the early 1970s, it attempts to explain Cruella's ( Emma Stone ) nefarious behavior in a way that will spark empathy in viewers. Think of it as Wicked by way of The Devil Wears Prada , with healthy dashes of Dickens and Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) . While there's very little iffy content in terms of sex, language, or substance use (aside from one scene of implied drunkenness) -- and a couple of punches and tackles are played for comedic effect -- this is definitely a murderous revenge story. Cruella's life is in danger more than once, and a parent dies (partially on camera) as her child watches. The circumstances around Cruella becoming an orphan may be upsetting for kids who've lost or been separated from their own parents/families. Also, children bully young Cruella because she's different, and both Cruella and her eventual boss, The Baroness ( Emma Thompson ), are wickedly funny -- i.e., they're mean and treat others terribly in ways that may make viewers laugh but certainly aren't kind. On the positive side, the film is notably more diverse than previous Dalmatians movies, and Cruella clearly demonstrates perseverance. (Oh, and about that dog coat? You don't have to worry about it. At least not in this film.) To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

Where to Watch

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Community Reviews

• Parents say (65)
• Kids say (179)

Based on 65 parent reviews

How this can be rated as Okay for kids, is beyond me

While not the worst disney remake, it still suffers from many of the same problems., what's the story.

Before she became known as a criminal with a savage affinity for dog-skin clothing, CRUELLA de Vil was known as Estella ( Emma Stone ), an orphaned girl living on the streets of London in the early 1970s, getting by on petty thefts and creative costumes. Her luck turns after she becomes an apprentice to London's most in-demand fashion designer, Baroness von Hellman ( Emma Thompson ). But just when it seems Estella's dreams are about to come true, she's confronted by her tragic past.

Is It Any Good?

Sinisterly superb, this is a well-crafted, phenomenally acted, artistically drenched triumph that's a whole lot more responsible than most other villain-as-main-character films. And yet it does make a hero out of a criminal. So, there's that. It's easy to see why Disney might feel that the accolades for Joker and the merchandising bonanza for Harley Quinn should belong to them: They started this trend of reexamining villains with Maleficent in 2014. But Angelina Jolie's evil fairy wasn't relatable or aspirational, whereas many young fans wanted to be vandal Harley Quinn . Just like many cinematic villains before her, Cruella is portrayed here as misunderstood, the product of trying to survive in a cold, unsympathetic world. She overcomes Oliver Twist - like adversity to find herself in a Great Expectations -like relationship with her boss, Baroness von Hellman. When the past she's worked to put behind her comes back with a (literal) vengeance, she "snaps." And she becomes awful, as in awfully glamorous and rebellious. Deliciously played by Stone, Cruella seeks her revenge with such smashing style that it's easy to think that it might encourage some kids to embrace their own mischevious side.

That likelihood is encouraged by the fact that the movie is just so great, in every way. The art direction feels lifted straight from a Vogue shoot, and the fashion is fabulous. Just as punk rock was taking over Carnaby Street in London during the '70s, Cruella stands up to wreck entrenched sensibilities of stuffy haute design through bold, glam, rock-inspired creations, delivered with defiant disruption. The movie's robust soundtrack is loaded with iconic music from the 1970s; it feels exciting every time a note starts to play. The script is divine, and the actors seem to delight in their characters. Thompson's narcissistic fashion designer is such an ingenious character creation, and Paul Walter Hauser 's take on henchman Horace is both authentic to the original animated depiction and a brilliant improvement. Another welcome modernization: bringing more diversity to Cruella's world. Some moments from the 1961 animated classic are revisited (Cruella driving recklessly with Jasper and Horace in her grand Panther De Ville), while the repugnant concept of turning dogs into a coat is dealt with in a satisfying way. There's no question that it's much harder to tell a dark story about a hero turned bad and keep it appropriate for younger audiences who love the source material, but the magnificent craftsmanship shown by director Craig Gillespie proves it can be done. Darling, let the black-and-white hair trend commence!

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about how Cruella experiments with treating others in a mean fashion but pulls back when she realizes she's hurting her friends. How does this compare to kids pushing social boundaries? How can we prevent or stop bullying behavior?

Why are villains/antiheroes often as compelling as heroes? Does Cruella's backstory make her more sympathetic? How does Cruella compare to other villain-as-main-character movies?

How does this prequel honor the original animated film? What scenes were similar, and what was changed?

What are the movie's messages around identity? Are those messages positive ones? Are people's personalities and choices determined by who their parents are?

How does Estella persevere through adversity to achieve her goals?

Movie Details

• In theaters : May 28, 2021
• On DVD or streaming : August 27, 2021
• Cast : Emma Stone , Emma Thompson , Mark Strong
• Director : Craig Gillespie
• Inclusion Information : Female actors
• Studio : Walt Disney Studios
• Genre : Comedy
• Topics : Cats, Dogs, and Mice , Friendship
• Character Strengths : Perseverance
• Run time : 134 minutes
• MPAA rating : PG-13
• MPAA explanation : some violence and thematic elements
• Award : Academy Award
• Last updated : August 30, 2023

Did we miss something on diversity?

Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

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Cruella Review

Emma stone delivers in this wild and wonky origin story about 101 dalmatians’ villainous diva..

By “re-imagining” their animated classics as live-action films, Disney has churned out a string of blockbusters. So perhaps it was inevitable that the iconic villainess of 1961’s One Hundred And One Dalmatians would get her due…again. 21 years after Glenn Close headlined two live-action adventures as the cackling fashionista Cruella de Vil , Emma Stone slips into a two-tone wig and a devilish grin for the inventive origin story Cruella.

Not a prequel but rather a Wicked-style retelling , Cruella forges a new path that begins in 1964. There, a snarling school girl named Estella battles back against bullies and earns a permanent record full of black marks. (Like Dalmatian spots!) However, neither schoolyard brats nor a horrific tragedy that pitches her into a hard-knock life on the streets of London will get in the way of her big dreams to become a major fashion designer.

Smash-cut to 10 years later, where Estella (Emma Stone) crafts stitch-perfect disguises for her thieving crew. Through pickpocketing and more elaborate heists, she, the clever Jasper (Joel Fry), the dopey Horace (Paul Walter Hauser), and two scruffy pups, Buddy and one-eyed Wink, scrape by in an abandoned warehouse. That is until Estella’s genius for design — and troublemaking — catches the eye of London’s top designer, the ever-chic, ever-merciless Baroness (Emma Thompson). Working under this haute couture heiress seems like a dream job, but things swiftly turn dog-eat-dog when a horrid revelation comes to light. So, Estella embraces her dark side, creating an alter ego named Cruella, who audaciously crashes every Baroness event to steal the spotlight. Through the battle of these stylish titans, we are not only gifted the birth of Cruella, but also two deliciously thrilling Disney villainesses for the price of one.

Cruella not only pulls from 101 Dalmatians, but also borrows plot elements, themes, and its diva-licious attitude from films like All About Eve, The Favourite, and The Devil Wears Prada . And it comes by it honestly, as the screenplay was penned by five writers, including The Devil Wears Prada’s Aline Brosh McKenna and The Favourite’s Tony McNamara, who gives Stone another witty and shrewd schemer to sink her teeth into. However, this curious collision of influences reflects the war going on in this unusual Disney movie.

What's Disney's best animation-to-live-action remake so far?

Cruella is a cheeky coming-of-age story about how a headstrong girl blossoms into a badass, one whose talent and genius will not be ignored. It is also a dark comedy about ambition, greed, corporate sabotage, revenge, class conflict, high fashion, and murder. Of course, much of the above are things that have been neatly folded into family-friendly movies before. (The Great Muppet Caper comes to mind.) Still, director Craig Gillespie struggles with how to create a balance that will enchant children and entertain adults. The result is a messy yet fascinating and tumultuously thrilling film.

The first challenge comes from a need to appeal to fans. Cruella includes her signature black-and-white hair, her reckless driving in chic cars, her bumbling crew, love for the insult “imbecile,” some callback jokes, and her classic cackle. All of this is folded in with ease, while some bits — including her desire for a Dalmatian coat — are re-imagined with razor-sharp wit. However, 101 Dalmatians' big-hearted pet owners, Anita (Kirby Howell-Baptiste) and Roger (Kayvan Novak), are haphazardly wedged in, giving two talented TV actors very little to do beyond gawping at the dueling Emmas. But most groan-worthy is the scene where Cruella concocts her last name. We’re talking Solo: A Star Wars Story levels of exasperating. Not every detail needs to be doggedly explained!

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The pandering to parents is just as bad, as evidenced by a comically long list of nostalgia-driven needle drops. Props to the soundtrack team for pulling together truly epic songs from Nina Simone, The Zombies, Deep Purple, The Clash, and The Rolling Stones. However, the editing team should have offered some restraint. The lyrics and song choices become so on-the-nose it’s hilariously predictable, like when a Cruella de Vil victory is celebrated by blasting “Sympathy for the Devil.” Nonetheless, the use of John McCrea’s “I Wanna Be Your Dog” is fantastic, hitting hard with a punk-rock fashion show performance that is edgy and astounding.

The fashion all around is an absolute marvel, because Disney smartly hired an actual genius designer. Even if you don’t know the name Jenny Beavan, you know her work. Over 43 years, she has created costumes for a string of period pieces and fantasy films, resulting in 10 Academy Award nominations. You might know her best for her Oscar-winning designs on Mad Max: Fury Road . Beavan has a brilliant mind that weaves together styles and textures to create characters, worlds, and story all with thoughtful fashion. In Cruella, she establishes Estella as a mirthful misfit from the moment the school girl Fresh Prince-s her blazer, wearing it inside out so the flashy liner shows. Despite car chases, spirited heists, and silly shenanigans, the greatest spectacle in Cruella comes in the sequences built around Beavan’s designs. Every time Cruella upstages The Baroness, a new look — and a new outrageous way to debut it — makes for enthralling fun, while making no mockery of fashion or apology for the ferocious women who wear it. That on its own feels like a gift, since “fashion” is so often sneered at as a frivolous thing. But we’re in a post-Miranda Priestly monologue world, so you better recognize that even those who aren’t interested in fashion are influenced by it.

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Fashion is almost a character in Cruella, and her co-stars do not disappoint. Whether racing through back alleys, eye-rolling over idiots, or cracking a smile wide and blood-red, Emma Stone is living for this moment, and it shows. The quipping misfits of her teen movie years prove the perfect place to cut her teeth, allowing her to bite hard into withering one-liners and howls of rebellion. However, this is about the evolution from Estella to Cruella, so there are pockets where this grandiosity feels like a façade, as it should. Stone is playing a woman finding her inner diva. Emma Thompson’s Baroness is the fully formed villainess here, and she is a vision of viciousness and glamor. No need for cackles or shouts. The Baroness is an ice queen, who might make you cry, bleed, or worse. But she need not raise her voice to make your spine quiver. The script gives Thompson a wealth of punchlines. Yet because of her savage yet sophisticated delivery, the funniest one becomes a simple “Uh-huh.” The Baroness is very rich, yet has no flips to give.

For their part, the supporting cast adds oomph. Hauser, who worked with Gillespie in I, Tonya, plays Horace with unexpected warmth, making him the perfect scene partner to a teeny pup with an eyepatch. John McCrea brings shade and flair as a vintage seller with an eye for opportunity. Jamie Demetriou leans hard into a caricature to establish what kind of fool would dare doubt Estella. Mark Strong gives steeliness in a small but pivotal role. Yet the standout in supporting goes to Joel Fry, who turns Jasper into much more than a lackey. With a twinkle in his eye and a sparkling tenderness, he hints there might be more between Cruella and her partner in crime. Yet, it’s never pushed to the point of subplot or distraction. Instead, this seeming intimacy gives a grander context to why he would put up with some of Cruella’s crueler antics. It also brings a little bit of spice.

Director Craig Gillespie and his screenwriters (Dana Fox, Tony McNamara, Aline Brosh McKenna, Kelly Marcel, and Steve Zissis) had a tricky needle to thread. They were tasked with creating a re-imagining fresh enough to thrill general audiences, but familiar enough to appease 101 Dalmatians fans. With a PG-13 film, mature content is allowed, but its edges must be child-proofed. The result is a wonky ride that feels like Cruella herself might be at the wheel. All that said, this studio franchise entry makes some big, wild swings that are simply spectacular. Along with the glorious gonzo fashion, this cacophonic film offers complicated female characters with unapologetic attitude, grand ambition, and a truly bonkers backstory that's better left unspoiled. These glimpses at greatness had me wishing it did more than scratch at camp. Swaying between outlandish and expected, the movie ultimately feels like a clumsy compromise. Still, with grimy whimsy, crackling leading ladies, imaginative twists, and plenty of eye-popping spectacle, Cruella is a hell of a good time.

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Emma stone in ‘cruella’: film review.

The actress plays 'One Hundred and One Dalmatians' villain Cruella de Vil in this origin story directed by Craig Gillespie and co-starring Emma Thompson.

By Lovia Gyarkye

Lovia Gyarkye

Arts & Culture Critic

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In case you needed reminding: The One Hundred and One Dalmatians franchise has never been about the dogs. No — its real star is Cruella de Vil, the acerbic, deliciously biting antagonist with an unhinged fur obsession.

Betty Lou Gerson voiced the character in the 1961 Disney animated film, investing the villain with wit, haughtiness and an understated charm. Glenn Close came next in 1996’s live-action 101 Dalmatians , all but — excuse the hyperbole — revolutionizing the role. Cruella, in Close’s claws, was sharper, more menacing and, with her untamed, two-tone black-and-white hair, scarlet lipstick and maniacal laugh, frankly iconic. To fill her shoes — or should I say her furs — is a daunting undertaking. But it’s one Emma Stone tackles with admirable hustle and considerable charisma in Disney’s new Cruella .

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Release date: Friday, May 28 Cast: Emma Stone, Emma Thompson, Joel Fry, Paul Walter Hauser,  Emily Beecham, Kirby Howell-Baptiste, Mark Strong Director: Craig Gillespie Screenwriters: Dana Fox, Tony McNamara; story by Aline Brosh McKenna, Kelly Marcel, Steve Zissis

Stone’s task in this fitfully fun, frenzied, beautifully costumed version directed by Craig Gillespie ( I, Tonya ) is to help us understand a Cruella-in-progress — the person she was before she started kidnapping and skinning puppies. I admit to finding it hard to picture Stone going so flamboyantly savage; despite her lauded work in La La Land and The Favourite , the actress will, for me, forever be Olive from Easy A . But I’m not afraid to admit when I’m wrong.

Running roughly 2 hours and 16 minutes, Cruella pursues a long, at times slow, path to contextualizing the titular figure’s origins. The film begins in 1960s England with young Cruella (Tipper Seifert-Cleveland), birth name Estella, struggling to fit in. There are early signs of the woman she will become: When her mother (Emily Beecham) admonishes her for not following a prescribed pattern while sewing, Cruella, precocious and unfazed, snaps, “That’s ugly,” before ripping her mother’s work to shreds.

She doesn’t fare much better at school, where her bicolored hair makes her a target for bullies and her attempts at self-defense land her in the dean’s office. Her only friend is Anita Darling (first played by Florisa Kamara, later by Kirby Howell-Baptiste). With Cruella on the verge of being expelled, her mother pulls her out of school, packs their bags and off to London they go.

On the road, the pair stop at a magnificent country home. Cruella’s mother, hushed and vague, commands her daughter to stay in the car. But ever the rebel, Cruella, her rescue puppy in tow, sets out to explore the grounds. What she finds in the house — an opulent fashion show replete with gorgeous gowns — blows her mind and warms her aspiring-designer heart. “For the first time in my life,” she marvels via voiceover, “I felt like I belonged.”

Mayhem ensues and Cruella finds herself running from security guards and three angry Dalmatians, ending up on the estate’s veranda, where she sees her mother talking to a mysterious figure. In an unexpected turn, the dogs attack Cruella’s mother, pushing her off the terrace’s edge.

Her death haunts Cruella, who goes to London, where she links up with a band of orphan thieves (Ziggy Gardner’s Jasper and Joseph MacDonald’s Horace). Now played by Stone, our protagonist also spends much time at war with herself: Should she embrace Estella, the kind, well-behaved girl her mother wanted her to be, or go all in as anarchic, angry Cruella? Stone assuredly embodies this tension, shifting between wide-eyed Estella and diabolical Cruella without ever losing the thread — a deep desire to be seen — that connects them.

As the story moves into the 1970s, Cruella, thanks to Jasper (now played by Joel Fry) and Horace (now played by Paul Walter Hauser), lands a job at a prestigious fashion house. Here the film veers into Devil Wears Prada terrain — Aline Brosh McKenna, who wrote that 2006 hit, has a story credit on the film  — and it’s a thrill to see Stone and Emma Thompson , sly and funny as the Miranda Priestley-esque Baroness in charge of the house, gnash their teeth at each other.

Their interplay is the main attraction in a film that wears genre loosely, lurching between dark comedy and heist thriller with an over-reliance on cross-cutting and on-the-nose musical cues to manufacture tension. The extent to which the titular figure has been sanitized and softened is also a bit disappointing: This Cruella is more revenge-seeking designer giving #girlboss energy than morally bankrupt dog murderer. (The film sidesteps that part of Cruella’s story altogether.) And while no one will be coming to Cruella for astute sociopolitical criticism, the movie underutilizes London’s punk rock revolution moment, treating it as fodder for Cruella’s aesthetic without teasing out the causes that inspired it. It feels like a missed opportunity for a subversiveness that would have deepened and expanded the film’s vision.

What Cruella lacks in script, however, it makes up for in sheer visual punch, with costume designer Jenny Beavan’s exquisitely detailed gowns especially enriching the angsty, sinister universe the film conjures. From Thompson’s glamorous plaid gold suit and show-stopping dresses to Stone’s lace-trimmed gloves, peplum skirts and one adventurous frock made of newspaper, the costumes are architectural and aesthetic feats that pay homage to designers from Vivienne Westwood and John Galliano to Alexander McQueen.

Ironically, contrary to the disposition of its titular character, Cruella requires dialing down the cynicism and buying in a little. But after such a wretchedly constrained and constricted year, who isn’t ready to revel in a little chaos?

Full credits

Distributor: Disney Production companyies: Gunn Films, Marc Platt Productions, TSG Entertainment, Walt Disney Pictures Cast: Emma Stone, Emma Thompson, Joel Fry, Paul Walter Hauser,  Emily Beecham, Kirby Howell-Baptiste, Mark Strong Director: Craig Gillespie Screenwriters: screenplay by Dana Fox, Tony McNamara; story by Aline Brosh McKenna, Kelly Marcel, Steve Zissis Producers: Andrew Gunn, Kristin Burr, Marc Platt, Mark Mostyn Executive producers: Emma Stone, Michelle Wright, Jared LeBoff, Glenn Close,Aline Brosh McKenna, Jessica Virtue,  Director of photography: Nicolas Karakatsanis Production designer: Fiona Crombie Costume designer: Jenny Beavan Editor: Tatiana S. Riegel Composer: Nicholas Britell Casting director: Lucy Bevan, Mary Vernieu

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Cruella Reviews

If only Cruella were just casually lazy, it could idly coast from one ear to the next without leaving much of a memory. But it’s almost alarming how malicious and toxic the whole thing feels.

Full Review | Original Score: 1/5 | Jul 5, 2024

Set in the emerging punk scene of 1970s London, the Craig Gillespie-directed prequel of the iconic Cruella De Vil is the perfect film to bring people back to the theater.

Full Review | Aug 22, 2023

As beautifully shot, written and acted as it is full of personality and style, Disney’s Cruella is a graphic novel-worthy origin story that beautifully captures its protagonist’s dichotomy.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 15, 2023

Boasting terrific lead performances and incredible costume design, Cruella is undeniably one of the better live action stories Disney has given us. However, the pacing issues and shoddy first half stop this from reaching true greatness.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 6, 2023

A creative, stylish, & snappy Disney Live Action Film yet. A must see in theaters for the fascinating directing & INCREDIBLE performance from EMMA STONE

Full Review | Jul 26, 2023

An incredibly captivating origin(al) story about one of Disney's classic villains. Emma Stone delivers an award-worthy display, interpreting two personalities in impressive fashion, stealing the spotlight from the other outstanding interpretations.

Full Review | Original Score: A- | Jul 25, 2023

Ultimately, it’s impossible to deny that Cruella is fun. Stone is clearly enjoying being eccentric as she flounces around London in her outlandish costumes, bringing mayhem wherever she goes.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Jul 25, 2023

Cruella doesn’t just retell an old story. It creates a lavish comic-book villain-style origin that opens up the film to an even larger audience.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jan 31, 2023

Cruella manages to overcome its inherent flaws with tremendous style and just enough of a flirtation with tearing down the Disney machinery to make it feel edgier than it actually is.

Full Review | Dec 7, 2022

Cruella is pure, perfect big studio escapism. It’s a witty, suspenseful, ultra-cool, killer Disney live-action triumph.

Full Review | Original Score: 4.5/5 | Oct 9, 2022

A stylish new spin to an iconic character.

Full Review | Original Score: 4.5/5 | Aug 17, 2022

Cruella is absolute trashy cinema, but it certainly is my kind of trash. Basically, The Devil Wears Prada for the queer crowd who loves to stan a messy villain.

Full Review | May 30, 2022

Cruella doesn't really feel like a Disney movie, and I truly mean that as a compliment. It's much darker than one might expect but never takes itself too seriously.

Full Review | Original Score: 7/10 | May 18, 2022

The best way to enjoy and even understand Cruella is to see it as a punk opera, in which what moves the needle are not so much the musical segments but the dresses on display.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Mar 30, 2022

A kind of family friendly Joker a retro tale of a misfit searching for identity, before giving into the madness. Did we need to know how Cruella became such a devil? Probably not. Then again, darlings, it was a lot of fun.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Mar 2, 2022

Despite a strong effort from Emma Stone, Cruella does little to justify meaning in a story that turns irredeemable Disney villains into well-meaning, underdog antiheroes.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/10 | Feb 18, 2022

If there is one thing this movie did best in terms of remaking 101 Dalmatians, its perfectly capturing Cruellas insanity, not just for the character herself, but for the entire picture.

Full Review | Original Score: 7/10 | Feb 16, 2022

It is incredibly easy to get lost within Cruella's world and have a fun time with the characters and camp that exist within the film's runtime.

Full Review | Original Score: B+ | Feb 12, 2022

This soundtrack was wild...Stone was good, but not fantastic.

Full Review | Jan 12, 2022

Unnecessary but still fun...

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Cruella review: Disney's live-action revamp hangs great performances on a chaotic premise

They're not bad, they were just drawn that way . Or at least that's what the current big-screen mini-boom in villain origin stories from Joker to Venom and Birds of Prey 's Harley Quinn seems to suggest — a trend so far-reaching now, it's even touched Disney. So what does it look like when the house that happily-ever-afters built gets into the antihero business?

The answer, apparently, is a movie as shiny and hectic as Cruella : a heady exercise in style and scenery-chewing whose high-gloss chaos seems designed less for cohesive storytelling or world-building than for looking super-cool in previews. Though the production is rich in other things, including Oscar-winning Emmas: Emma Stone stars as the iconic title character, an orphaned urchin with a flair for fashion and a marked distaste for certain canine breeds; Emma Thompson is the Baroness von Hellman, her erstwhile employer, mentor, and nemesis.

Only one of them is actually British, though Stone has adopted a plummy theatrical rasp for Estella (played in the opening scenes by Tipper Seifert-Cleveland) — an odd, unruly little girl whose stormy temperament and bifurcated hair marks her from birth as an outcast. ("I've always made a statement," she purrs early on. "Not everyone appreciated that. But I wasn't for everyone.") Her tenderhearted mother (Emily Beecham) tries her best to protect her, but when those efforts end in tragedy, young Estella is left to make her own way in the mean (if conspicuously clean) streets of swinging 1960s London.

That's where she befriends fellow ragamuffins Jasper ( Joel Fry ), and Horace ( Richard Jewell 's Paul Walter Hauser ), the boys who will become her found family and future partners in grift. They may be petty criminals, but they're also loyal to a fault; it's their machinations that eventually help land her a low-level job in the atelier of the Baroness, imperious queen of ladies' dressmaking. Her ladyship, it's soon made clear, is a ruthless co-opter of other people's talents, and Estella's inspired sketches are exactly the kind of looks she's more than happy to kill for.

Thus from the ashes of a disillusioned Estella — and several calamitous plot revelations to come — is Cruella born: a goddess of vengeance, righteous in her fury and fake (or are they?) furs. Director Craig Gillespie, who skirted camp so nimbly in 2017's I, Tonya , pits his lead actresses against each other in a dynamic maybe best described as The Devil Wears Dalmation (and in fact, Devil Wears Prada scribe Aline Brosh McKenna is one of six writers credited here).

He never fully nails down the tone, but there's more than a little Meryl Streep in Thompson's glacial Baroness, and at least a little anxious Anne Hathaway beneath Stone's operatic snarls and elaborate wiggery. (To watch Thompson pop an olive in her mouth or casually crush the spirit of an underling is a gift not even a mute button could take away.)

The costumes, by Jenny Beavan ( Mad Max: Fury Road , Sherlock Holmes ), blossom into full fantasy as the story moves into the '70s: a Vivienne Westwood fever dream of punk-rock couture, swathed in yards of trash-bag latex and chiffon. The soundtrack, too, is a gold-plated celebration of the era; you can almost hear the Disney dollars ding as the canonized hits of Blondie and the Stooges and the Rolling Stones pour through the speakers.

But those endless pieces of flair can also feel like a noisy substitute for a story line that never quite materializes, subsumed instead by showpiece moments that seem to lurch from scene to scene: a collection of pin-drop lines and killer GIFs pressed haphazardly into movie form. That may be at least in part a product of trying to be all PG-13 things to all people by giving them a reimagined villainess who is both worthy of empathy (she doesn't just skin puppies for fun ) and naughty enough to be safely but certifiably outrageous. So Cruella comes off as a curious animal; eager to change its spots, and trying a little bit of everything along the way. Grade: B –

Cruella hits theaters and Disney+ Premier Access on May 28.

Related content:

• First Cruella reactions praise Disney origin story: 'Like a Disneyfied Devil Wears Prada'
• Emma Stone's Cruella claws (and heels) come out in kickass new trailer
• Everything to know about Cruella , the de-vilish dognapper origin story
• Creating Cruella : Behind the seams of the high-fashion film's punk rock look

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A live-action prequel feature film following a young Cruella de Vil. A live-action prequel feature film following a young Cruella de Vil. A live-action prequel feature film following a young Cruella de Vil.

• Craig Gillespie
• Tony McNamara
• Aline Brosh McKenna
• Emma Thompson
• 2K User reviews
• 346 Critic reviews
• 59 Metascore
• 29 wins & 43 nominations total

Top cast 99+

• The Baroness

• Catherine …

• John the Valet

• Anita Darling
• (as Kirby Howell-Baptiste)

• Liberty Shop Girl

• Baroness Head of Security
• Mean Ginger

• Police Commissioner

• All cast & crew
• Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

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Did you know

• Trivia Glenn Close , who played the first live-action Cruella DeVil in 101 Dalmatians (1996) and 102 Dalmatians (2000) , serves as executive producer for this movie.
• Goofs Cruella crashes a car into an old-fashioned British red phone box, which buckles on impact. These phone boxes were made of cast iron which would, with sufficient force, break, not bend.

Cruella de Vil : They say there are five stages of grief. Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Well, I'd like to add one more. Revenge

• Crazy credits There are scenes in the closing credits: Anita and Roger receive a gift of two Dalmatians (one each) from Cruella. The dogs are named Pongo and Perdita, the parent dogs from 101 Dalmatians. Roger then starts to play the Cruella de Vil song from One Hundred and One Dalmatians (1961) .
• Connections Featured in AniMat's Crazy Cartoon Cast: D23 Expo 2019 Extravaganza (2019)
• Soundtracks Bloody Well Right Written by Rick Davies (as Richard Davies) and Roger Hodgson Performed by Supertramp Courtesy of A&M Records Under license from Universal Music Enterprises

User reviews 2K

• waltermwilliams
• May 26, 2021
• How long is Cruella? Powered by Alexa
• May 28, 2021 (United States)
• United States
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• Official Disney+ Hotstar
• Cruella de Vil
• Old Royal Naval College, King William Walk, Greenwich, London, Greater London, England, UK (Rock Concert and Fountain at Regent's Park)
• Walt Disney Pictures
• Marc Platt Productions
• See more company credits at IMDbPro
• $100,000,000 (estimated)
• $86,103,234
• $21,496,997
• May 30, 2021
• $233,503,234

Technical specs

• Runtime 2 hours 14 minutes
• Dolby Atmos
• Dolby Digital
• Dolby Surround 7.1

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Review: ‘Cruella’ is dazzling fun but shows too much sympathy for the de Vil

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It may seem counterintuitive, but the easiest way to enjoy “Cruella” — and it’s plenty enjoyable, even when it overstays its welcome — is to try and forget that it has much of anything to do with “One Hundred and One Dalmatians.” The filmmakers, of course, do not always make this easy. In line with the Walt Disney Company’s nostalgia-tickling, franchise-building corporate imperatives, they have been tasked with revisiting that 1961 animated chestnut and spinning off a live-action origin story for its memorable fascist-fashionista villain, Cruella de Vil. And so they pile on the tie-in references galore. Those famous spotted dogs make an appearance. You’ll recognize key supporting characters from their names, like Roger and Anita, Horace and Jasper, and you’ll likely also pick up on a snippet of the original film’s signature tune: “Cruella de Vil / Cruella de Vil / If she doesn’t scare you, no evil thing will … ”

The muddled but intriguing revelation of “Cruella” is that the thing in question isn’t really all that evil. Like so many other storybook villains subjected to elaborate image makeovers, from “Wicked” to “Maleficent,” Cruella — played here by a wholly committed, glammed-to-the-nines Emma Stone — isn’t much of a monster. Certainly she’s a far cry from the shrieking fur-clad demon played by Glenn Close in 1996’s live-action “101 Dalmatians” (and its best-unmentioned sequel). She’s just impatient, perpetually misunderstood and unwilling to play by the rules of a world that fails to recognize her brilliance.

What this leaves us with, practically speaking, isn’t a prequel or an origin story so much as the product of an alternate timeline. By movie’s end, this Cruella seems as likely to skin a dog as she is to wear a T-shirt to the Met Gala. Puppycidal maniacs don’t make sympathetic protagonists — and “Cruella,” above all, wants you to sympathize.

To that end, our protagonist is introduced as a likably mischievous English tot named Estella (played by Tipper Seifert-Cleveland) who has keen fashion sense, a telltale black-and-white bob of hair and a loving mother (Emily Beecham) who tries to suppress her naturally rebellious streak. But then, before you can say “Lemony Snicket,” a series of ghastly incidents leave Estella tragically orphaned and running for her life on the streets of London. When we catch up with her several years later, she’s a seasoned grifter (now played by Stone), her hair dyed a less obtrusive crimson and her table piled high with magnificent sartorial creations. A master of DIY couture, she sews brilliant disguises for herself and her partners in crime, the bumbling Horace (Paul Walter Hauser, very good) and the sensitive Jasper (Joel Fry, ditto).

These scenes set us adrift in a 1970s London that, like the actual 1970s London, is considerably more racially diverse than earlier Disney entertainments might have bothered to register. The director, Craig Gillespie, and his cinematographer, Nicolas Karakatsanis, send their camera soaring and whooshing through the streets in a movie that surges with infectious punk energy. If the two-guys-and-a-girl antics pack some of the New Wave vitality of “Band of Outsiders,” the serpentine tracking shots and nonstop needle drops often seem to be channeling “Goodfellas.” (The Rolling Stones’ “Sympathy for the Devil” is merely the most on-the-nose choice on a rebellion-themed soundtrack crammed with ’60s and ’70s hits like “Feeling Good,” “Should I Stay or Should I Go” and, fittingly for this leading lady, “Stone Cold Crazy.”)

Gillespie makes a pretty snug fit for this material after his darkly comic Tonya Harding biopic, “I, Tonya” ; you could think of this superior follow-up as “I, Cruella,” another cracked portrait of a downtrodden but determined young woman none-too-reliably narrating the story of her many rises and falls. But then, you could also see it as the latest variation on a classic fairy-tale template: The screenwriters, Dana Fox and Tony McNamara (a writer on Stone’s 2018 film, “The Favourite”), shrewdly position Estella as a kind of shabby-chic Cinderella, albeit one who dresses up for a different ball every night and dreams of revenge rather than Prince Charming.

Every Cinderella needs a wicked stepmother, and here that role falls to the imperious Baroness von Hellman, played by an impossibly elegant and diabolical Emma Thompson. (The Miranda Priestly vibes are far from coincidental; Aline Brosh McKenna, who receives a story credit here, also wrote “The Devil Wears Prada.” ) When Estella lucks her way into a job as a designer at the Baroness’ ultra-prestigious label, she initially can’t believe her good fortune — but then, through a series of cleverly interlocking revelations, she comes to learn that the Baroness is more than just an unusually demanding boss. She’s a dangerous narcissist and an unambiguous monster, someone who deserves to be humiliated, disgraced and finally toppled from her throne.

And so Estella unleashes her long-dormant alter ego, Cruella, who begins crashing the Baroness’ nightly galas with a succession of stunning gowns and a natural flair for shock-the-runway theatrics. Whether she’s strutting about in shiny black leather, incorporating wearable flammables or — in a jaw-dropping visual highlight — trailing a mile-long chiffon train from the back of a garbage truck, Cruella soon establishes herself as the glam-punk performance artist of the fashion world. Besides relying on muscle from Horace and Jasper, she borrows some queer-eye inspiration from Artie, a vintage dress-shop owner played by a fine if underused John McCrea. (The genius behind Cruella’s artistry is the endlessly inventive costume designer Jenny Beavan, in her most extravagant showcase since “Mad Max: Fury Road.” )

The battle of the Emmas is as hard to resist on-screen as it must have been on paper, even if it’s not exactly a fair fight. In the context of the story, Cruella’s headline-grabbing stunts make her a persistent thorn in the Baroness’ side; in terms of pure on-screen magnetism, it’s a different story. Few can do withering arrogance with more offhand conviction than Thompson, the kind of actor who can raise a glass to herself (“Here’s to me ”) as if it were the most logical thing in the world. She’s a total hoot. She also winds up illuminating a deeper conceptual flaw in “Cruella” and perhaps the larger cottage industry of recasting memorable baddies as tortured antiheroes. In a movie ostensibly about the origins of a great villain, it’s Thompson’s Baroness who comes off as the actual great villain.

Stone of course has trickier, more complicated notes to play. Curiously enough, her most satisfying moments belong to Estella, quietly biding her time and plotting her next move, rather than to Cruella, an indistinct presence who often seems in danger of being upstaged — sometimes upholstered — by her own couture. But if Stone has trouble navigating her inner Jekyll-and-Hyde dynamic, that’s largely due to the herky-jerky imprecisions in the script, which seems uncertain whether to make the emergent Cruella merely misguided, borderline unhinged or genuinely unscrupulous — and finally settles on a coy, unsatisfying mix of all three.

It’s instructive that in “The Favourite,” one of a few recent films to feature as many ruffled gowns and sky-high wigs as this one, Stone nailed every nuance as another lowly young woman turned ambitious schemer. That movie reveled in its moral ambiguities; “Cruella,” trying to do something similar, is ultimately stymied by them. While its surface pleasures are dazzling — if a bit protracted, at well north of two hours — it finally suggests that memorable screen villainy and complex inner humanity may be forced into a kind of stalemate, at least when there’s a corporate-branded intellectual property involved. “Cruella” isn’t a bad movie, even if its heroine is nowhere near bad enough.

Rated: PG-13, for some violence and thematic elements Running time: 2 hours, 14 minutes Playing: Opens May 28 in theaters and streaming as PVOD on Disney+

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Cruella Is the Girl-Bossification of the Madwoman

That Cruella is an atrocity with neither purpose nor soul shouldn’t come as a surprise. It is, after all, another in a long line of IP mining nostalgia and better works of the past that Disney is more than happy to keep churning out. Hollywood is an industry too myopic to understand its past and too inert to move into a more artistically dynamic future. But it’s the way this tepid film operates that makes it galling.

The pleasure of Cruella de Vil — first voiced by Betty Lou Gerson in the 1961 animated adaptation and later played by Glenn Close in the 1996 live-action film — is her outrageous style and cruelty. She is a woman intent on skinning Dalmatians to make herself a coat. Here, Cruella, played by Emma Stone, is softened and made aspirational. She’s given a loyal pooch as a sidekick so you know for sure she wouldn’t kill animals herself for the sake of fashion. (Although there is a throwaway joke about skinning Dalmatians that nods to her beginnings.)

The film begins with Cruella’s birth, depicting her mop of half-black and half-white hair as natural rather than an aesthetic choice. Born Estella, we see large swaths of her adolescence in the mid-’60s when she’s played by the precocious Tipper Seifert-Cleveland. She’s framed as such a rabble-rouser that the world doesn’t know what to do with her. She gets into fights at her prep school until she’s kicked out. She’s lonely; her only companion is a loyal puppy she finds who remains by her side. What splits her life in two is the death of her mother, who is knocked off the side of a grand, cliff-side estate by some (CGI) Dalmatians that were originally chasing Estella. She blames herself for her mother’s death and makes her way to London, where she falls in with Jasper (Joel Fry) and Horace (Paul Walter Hauser). They become lifelong friends, bringing her into their world of grifting and petty thievery. The bulk of the film takes place against the backdrop of late-1970s London, mining this setting for its various uprisings and counterculture dynamics. Eventually, she takes a job working for the Baroness (Emma Thompson), a conniving designer as haughty and fashionable as she is cruel to her staff. Estella sees her as a mentor, but grows angry when she learns more about her boss’s horrifying behavior (she is an unrepentant baby killer, among other atrocities). It’s here when Estella decides to become Cruella, setting her sights on usurping the Baroness as a designer.

Cruella , the film and the character, postures with an off-the-rack punk sensibility, as if Disney could hold even the echo of counterculture when it is the dominant culture itself. If you look closely, Cruella is indicative of the very culture it pretends to critique: Its central character is a white woman whose concerns and politics begin and end with herself. She’s a girl boss pretending to fight against the powers that be. She doesn’t want to overthrow the Establishment so much as become it. Cruella takes one of the richest narrative archetypes — the madwoman — and whittles her down into a glossy, hollow, capitalism-approved monster fueled by girl-boss politics. It has nothing to say about how women move through the world.

It’s hard to know where to begin with the aesthetic failures of this film. There are odd choices, like the insistence on conveying information through newspaper headlines superimposed on a scene. The scenes at night made me wonder if cinematographer Nicolas Karakatsanis forgot how to light properly in order to convey information. This is especially frustrating in the climax of the film, which is so pallid and gray I could barely make out details. The needle drops are especially confounding. They either feel odd, pointless, or utterly random, as if to showcase the depth of Disney’s pockets. Or in the case of “These Boots Were Made for Walking” — which plays when Cruella gets drunk on her boss’s whiskey and redesigns a window in the Liberty of London store out of anger — a way to drive home the thin pop-feminist thematics. The costume design, led by Jenny Beavan, is sometimes beautiful. It takes its cues from the works of Vivienne Westwood and Alexander McQueen, lending Cruella a punk air and the Baroness an austere quality. There are reams of crimson taffeta. Cruella’s trademark hair is fashioned into a crown. Swooping gold collars frame her face and shoulders. There are slinking gowns, towering heels, bodices thick with jewelry and boning. But all this beauty feels inert as it’s in service of a story that feels confused about what it wants to be and who the character at its center is.

You’ve seen the madwoman before. She’s your ex-girlfriend with smeared red lipstick refusing to quiet her anger during an argument. She’s the former wife trapped in the attic whose machinations have been branded unfit for society. She’s every woman who has been called “too much.” Cruella director Craig Gillespie, who previously helmed the miles-better I, Tonya , told the L.A. Times something that made it clear the madwoman was on his mind while making the film: “As a character, we’ve created this journey for her where she has this inner voice and she has this talent she’s trying to express. But she’s penalized for it because it’s outside of the constructs of society at the time. She’s in this rigid English system where you can’t be outside the lines.” But there’s nothing in the story that truly expresses Cruella’s inner life or makes clear the dynamics that would deem her as someone living outside the bounds society had formed for women at the time. “I’m Cruella. Born brilliant. Born bad. And a little bit mad,” Cruella says with authority at one point, as if merely uttering those things could make them true.

Classic Hollywood often excelled at depicting the inner lives of madwomen, most resplendently within the women’s picture — a strange genre spanning from the 1930s to the 1950s that only ended because of the fall of the original studio system. This genre made stars out of women like Joan Crawford and Barbara Stanwyck. Its films considered the sexual, financial, and psychological aspects of womanhood with a fiercely defined aesthetic, narrative grace, and truly dynamite acting underscored by a proto-feminist perspective. Cruella limns how Hollywood has learned all the wrong lessons from the 1950 powerhouse film All About Eve. In that film, the older woman who is being manipulated by an ambitious younger fan is the focus. Ever since then Hollywood has discarded considerations of ageism. Older women — in this case, the Baroness, whom Thompson plays with a touch of boredom — are the villains. It’s telling, too, that the luminescent Black actress Kirby Howell-Baptiste, who plays the deliciously named but poorly written Anita Darling, is slotted into the role of the friend who helps Cruella along her journey to become a fashion designer. She’s a tool for Cruella, not a defined character. What Cruella does have to say about womanhood is rooted in youthful whiteness. All of the film’s issues are rooted in its perspective on power, from who gets it to who truly deserves it.

It’s a wonder that Tony McNamara, who has a screenplay credit along with Dana Fox, could be involved in this given his intriguing work on the venomous The Favourite and the delightful series The Great. (Story-by credits go to Aline Brosh McKenna, Kelly Marcel, and Steve Zissis.) No lead actress could save a film so poorly conceived, aesthetically facile, and narratively rote, but Emma Stone is a particularly disappointing choice. In the past, I’ve enjoyed Stone’s work in The Favourite … and that’s pretty much it. But watching Cruella led me to look at that performance from a different perspective. I realized it wasn’t so much what Stone was doing that piqued my interest, but how the character was framed visually and written. In Cruella, Stone sounds like what an alien who only ever saw American actors playing British characters would think a British person sounds like. Her gestures are empty — a flourish of the wrist, the way she rolls or widens her searchlight eyes. Everything feels underlined in a way to mark Cruella as weird and different from her surroundings. But it just feels silly and poorly thought out. She lacks a sense of play. She doesn’t feel bold enough to fully rock the ostentatious frocks she wears. You can’t help but think of the camp extravagance Glenn Close brought to the role in 1996 and yearn for such a daring approach. Ultimately, Stone does not offer us a window into who this woman is, beyond a vehicle for mining IP.

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A Kinder 'Cruella'? Film Reimagines The Dalmatian Villain With Spotty Success

Justin Chang

Is Cruella de Vil (Emma Stone) meant to come off as misguided, unhinged or genuinely unscrupulous? A new film tries to suggest a complicated mix of all three and winds up feeling mostly confused. Disney hide caption

Is Cruella de Vil (Emma Stone) meant to come off as misguided, unhinged or genuinely unscrupulous? A new film tries to suggest a complicated mix of all three and winds up feeling mostly confused.

Chalk it up to our eternal fascination with human evil or to a movie industry that's short on original ideas, but it seems like almost every classic villain nowadays is guaranteed their own feature-length backstory. The results have been a mixed but not uninteresting bag, and they've allowed some fine actors to go entertainingly over-the-top: Joaquin Phoenix won an Oscar for his psychic meltdown as the Joker , and Maleficent , a clever reframing of Sleeping Beauty , remains one of only a few movies that have put Angelina Jolie's otherworldly screen presence to effective use.

The latest example of this trend is Cruella , and it's, well, a mixed but not uninteresting bag. Like Maleficent , it's a Disney live-action movie inspired by an earlier Disney animated classic — in this case, One Hundred and One Dalmatians . It's set in 1970s London, and it means to show us the youthful origins of Cruella de Vil, that fascist fashionista who kidnapped a litter of Dalmatian puppies and tried to turn them into a spotted fur coat.

The thing is, though, that dog killers aren't the most sympathetic protagonists, and this movie definitely wants us to sympathize. As a result, this Cruella doesn't really seem evil enough to commit puppycide by movie's end. She's presented as a rebel — impatient, perpetually misunderstood and unwilling to play by the rules of a world that casts her aside at every turn.

Cruella is already a mischief maker when we first meet her as a young girl named Estella. Her loving mother tries to put her on the straight and narrow, but after a series of tragic events, Estella is orphaned and left to fend for herself on the streets of London. A few years later, Estella, now played by Emma Stone, is a seasoned grifter committing robberies with her buddies Horace and Jasper. (They're played by Paul Walter Hauser and Joel Fry.)

Estella has an extraordinary eye for fashion; she sews amazing disguises for herself and her partners in crime, with a bit of inspiration from a vintage store owner, Artie, played by John McCrea. Before long, Estella lucks her way into a job as a designer for the Baroness, an imperious queen of couture who runs the most exclusive fashion label in London.

Pop Culture Happy Hour

In 'cruella', the de vil's in the details.

As the Baroness, the great Emma Thompson gives a performance of diabolical wit — she's half wicked stepmother, half Miranda Priestly from The Devil Wears Prada . The Baroness brings out a madly competitive streak in Estella, who soon unleashes her pent-up alter ego, Cruella, as a kind of glam-punk performance artist of the fashion world.

Determined to upstage her nemesis while still guarding her secret identity as Estella, Cruella begins crashing the Baroness' galas and parties in attention-grabbing gowns — the work of the brilliant costume designer Jenny Beavan, in her biggest showcase since Mad Max: Fury Road .

The Emma-vs.-Emma matchup is as irresistible onscreen as it must have been on paper. But their rivalry also points out a conceptual weakness in the movie, and perhaps in the ongoing trend of trying to recast villains as sympathetic antiheroes. Thompson's Baroness is flat-out monstrous in ways that put this Cruella to shame. In a movie that's supposed to be about the rise of a great villain, the Baroness turns out to be the actual great villain.

Nonetheless, Stone gives it her all in a tricky role with echoes of the lowly young woman turned ruthless schemer she played in The Favourite . Here, she's frankly more interesting as Estella, smartly biding her time and plotting her next move, than she is as Cruella, who is often upstaged by her own wardrobe. Is Cruella meant to come off as misguided, unhinged or genuinely unscrupulous? The script tries to suggest a complicated mix of all three and winds up feeling mostly confused.

Cruella was flashily directed by Craig Gillespie, who previously made the darkly comic Tonya Harding biopic I, Tonya . His filmmaking in Cruella is all on the surface, but that surface is undeniably entertaining. The soaring, whooshing camerawork sometimes seems to be channeling Goodfellas -era Martin Scorsese , and the rebellion-themed soundtrack is crammed with '60s and '70s hits from the Rolling Stones, the Doors, The Clash, Blondie and more. Cruella is much too long and undisciplined at two hours and 14 minutes, but in its best moments, it surges with a rude punk energy. It's not a bad movie, even if its protagonist isn't nearly bad enough.

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Cruella First Reviews: Emmas Stone and Thompson and Their Immaculate Costumes Light Up the Screen

Early reviews for the disney villain's origin story say the punk-rock reimagining is creative, fun, and visually striking, even if it's a tad long..

TAGGED AS: Disney , Disney Plus , Film , films , movie , movies , The Walt Disney Company , Walt Disney Pictures

Who needs one hundred and one Dalmatians when you can have one-on-one Emmas? Disney’s latest live-action reimagining, Cruella , takes us back to the origin of its titular villain, now portrayed by Emma Stone as a newcomer in the fashion world clashing with an evil nemesis, played by Emma Thompson . The first reviews of the feature, which heads to theaters and Disney+ (for an extra charge) this weekend, mostly highlight the shared scene-chewing of the two Oscar-winning actresses as well as the costumes they parade on screen. Whether this One Hundred and One Dalmatian s prequel is a great movie overall, however, is up for debate.

Here’s what critics are saying about Cruella :

Is Cruella a surprise success?

It just exceeded all of my expectations. –  Sharronda Williams, Pay or Wait

Cruella  upends expectations to demonstrate that origin stories can be roundly entertaining. –  Peter Martin, ScreenAnarchy

Whatever movie you’re expecting from Cruella , you’d be wrong. –  Matt Singer, ScreenCrush

The biggest surprise of 2021… Craig Gillespie’s Cruella turns any preconceived notions on their head. –  Josh Wilding, ComicBookMovie.com

Does it feel like other Disney fare?

The biggest compliment anyone could give Cruella is that it doesn’t have any feel or semblance of a Disney movie. – Nate Adams, The Only Critic

A bold departure for Disney that’s unlike anything we’ve ever seen from them before. – Josh Wilding, ComicBookMovie.com

You have to remind yourself that you’re that you’re watching a Disney film. – Sharronda Williams, Pay or Wait

Parents of younger kids may be shocked that such a film carries the Disney imprint. – Peter Debruge, Variety

You get the feeling it’s geared as much towards Disney’s not insignificant adult fanbase as it is to a younger crowd. – Patrick Cremona, Radio Times

Whether its dark-but-Disney strangeness intrigues or repels, there’s often something to love and loathe in equal measure. – Jacob Oller, Paste Magazine

Slightly darker than your standard Disney fare…the film feels less like a satisfying character drama than a work of corporate rebranding. – Matt Singer, ScreenCrush

(Photo by ©2021 Disney Enterprises Inc.)

How does it compare to the other live-action reimaginings?

What Cruella is not — to the immense relief of many, I’m sure — is another Maleficent …  Cruella proves ingeniously creative in its reimagining of the underlying IP. – Peter Debruge, Variety

A movie that rivals the likes of  Aladdin  and  The Jungle Book . – Josh Wilding, ComicBookMovie.com

The studio just cannot crack the code in recapturing the magic that made the animated originals so endearing. Add  Cruella , the newest revamp of their rogues gallery to the list of failures. – Kyle Pinion, ScreenRex

Will fans of the original film enjoy this?

There are several simple nods to the original story and 101 Dalmatians that will make most fans smile to themselves when they catch them. – Tessa Smith, Mama’s Geeky

Rather than shoehorning in a bunch of forced moments – “Oh, so that’s why she hates Dalmatians”… this take very much makes her a complex character in her own right. – Josh Wilding, ComicBookMovie.com

Disney purists may be put off by the rewriting of canon. – Sean P. Means, The Movie Cricket

Any attempt to square the events of this film with the animated canon quickly falls apart… You’re better off just assuming that  Cruella  occurs in an alternate timeline. – Brent Hankins, The Lamplight Review

There’s no suggestion she’d ever consider such cruelty… As an actual prequel, it’s a tick-infested mutt of a movie. – Rob Hunter, Film School Rejects

The manner in which the script tries to bend itself away from and around Cruella’s specific Dalmatian-centric animal cruelty future requires some Cirque du Soleil-esque flexibility. – Douglas Davidson, Elements of Madness

How is the writing ?

Incredibly good and sincerely humorous. – Peter Martin, ScreenAnarchy

Dana Fox and Tony McNamara’s Cruella screenplay plays with your expectations in clever, non-murderous ways. – Brian Truitt, USA Today

Writers Dana Fox and Tony McNamara boldly crafted a narrative that has the energy of shows like Revenge and Ugly Betty … I applaud it for actually taking risks in its story, adding dimension to this once simple, yet iconic, villain. – Rendy Jones, Rendy Reviews

One of the joys of Cruella is how the screenplay escalates the public fashion battle between the established Baroness and the punk-minded Cruella. – Sean P. Means, The Movie Cricket

It’s a screenplay that’s tying itself in knots to create a brand new character that’s more Harley Quinn than Cruella De Vil. – Kyle Pinion, ScreenRex

Needlessly complicated and stuffed with too many supporting characters. – Brent Hankins, The Lamplight Review

How is Emma Stone?

Emma Stone delivers an unmissable performance that is every bit as Oscar-worthy as her work in  La La Land . – Josh Wilding, ComicBookMovie.com

Emma Stone absolutely crushes this role, so much so that it can be said she blows Glenn Close’s portrayal out of the water. – Tessa Smith, Mama’s Geeky

Stone is theatrical and clownish in the best way, wearing the over-the-top expressions that’ve sprinkled charm into her other roles like costume jewelry. – Jacob Oller, Paste Magazine

(Photo by ©2021 Disney Enterprises)

What about Emma Thompson ?

The definition of glorious, Thompson delivers a delightfully droll Baroness Von Hellman. – Hope Madden, MaddWolf

Thompson will most likely require some amount of reconstructive surgery on her jaw from the amount of scenery she chews throughout this movie. – Brian Lloyd, entertainment.ie

Thompson’s Baroness is the best thing — and only good thing — in the movie. – Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle

And when they’re on screen together?

Together, they are the highly strung dysfunctional double-act that post-lockdown cinema didn’t know it needed. – Peter Bradshaw, Guardian

Echoing the same energies as Anne Hathaway and Meryl Streep in The Devil Wears Prada , Stone and Thompson are a wealth of Oscar calibrated perfection. – Nate Adams, The Only Critic

Scenes between the Emmas elevate the entire project, allowing Thompson to radiate devastating narcissism and Stone to mine her character’s emotional and intellectual landscape. – Hope Madden, MaddWolf

There is no doubt that these are two of the greatest actresses of all time, and to see them working so incredibly together, is a treat. – Tessa Smith, Mama’s Geeky

Every time the two Emmas have a scene together, in which they must be drippingly arch and very British, Older Emma wipes Younger Emma right off the screen. – Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle

The two are a delight both apart and together. – Rob Hunter, Film School Rejects

How is the rest of the cast ?

Hauser and Fry are terrific as Estella/Cruella’s crew. They’re animated without being “cartoony,” giving their supporting characters multi-faceted internality and introspection. – Courtney Howard, Fresh Fiction

While the entire ensemble is delightful, Joel Fry is notable as the sensitive and loyal Jasper. – Rendy Jones, Rendy Reviews

If there’s a weak link then it’s John McCrea, who delivers a somewhat wooden performance as vintage fashion shop owner Artie. – Patrick Cremona, Radio Times

Unfortunately, Mark Strong is wasted in a mostly forgettable role that could have been filled by any British actor. – Josh Wilding, ComicBookMovie.com

We’ve been hearing about those costumes…

They are ingenious and artful in their presentation. They are complex and tell stories all on their own. They are provocative and challenging, yet enticing. – Douglas Davidson, Elements of Madness

The way the move, the way they standout in a crowd, and the way that either Emma wears them, is just a joy to look at. – Tessa Smith, Mama’s Geeky

You don’t need to be a fashion connoisseur to appreciate the jaw-dropping design choices made throughout the movie. – Josh Wilding, ComicBookMovie.com

The biggest mic drops of the film come from its jaw-dropping dresses: One moment featuring a garbage truck is a particularly extravagant bit of sartorial effectwork. – Jacob Oller, Paste Magazine

The costumes  are  spectacular — it’s just that they’re the  only  exciting thing onscreen for the middle hour of the film. – Matt Singer, ScreenCrush

Will the costumes get some awards love ?

There’s not a world in which Jenny Beavan’s incredible costuming work doesn’t get award attention. – Nate Adams, The Only Critic

There’s no doubt that Jenny Beavan will score this film’s lone Oscar nomination and likely win. – Kyle Pinion, ScreenRex

Costume designer Jenny Beavan is more than likely on her way to at least another nomination for her work here. – Douglas Davidson, Elements of Madness

Jenny Beavan (Costume Designer), Nadia Stacey (Hair & Makeup), and their respective teams are hopefully already having their names etched into next year’s Academy Awards. – Josh Wilding, ComicBookMovie.com

How are the movie’s punk rock trappings ?

The jukebox Cruella soundtrack, which includes hits from a number of ‘60s and ‘70s bands, is broadly excellent. – Patrick Cremona, Radio Times

It’s non-conformist with a bad attitude, badass music, and punk rock fits that would make Vivienne Westwood applaud. – Sherin Nicole, idobi.com

It makes the entire punk scene come to life with her signature black and white flair that matches her rebellious spirit and anarchist energy. – Rendy Jones, Rendy Reviews

Cruella  often veers into that Disneyfied corporate mall-punk of  The Nightmare Before Christmas  Hot Topic apparel. – Jacob Oller, Paste Magazine

It’s hard to not roll your eyes at its attempt to sell you on the idea that this is a “punk/rebel” take on the character. Yeah, because there’s nothing more punk than market tested four quadrant cinema. – Jacob Oller, Paste Magazine

Are there any issues ?

My God does this movie need trimming. You will have aged noticeably by the time it’s over. – Hope Madden, MaddWolf

It is simply too long. Clocking in at nearly two hours and fifteen minutes is a bit ridiculous and feels unnecessary. – Tessa Smith, Mama’s Geeky

Cruella is rather weighed down by an overly baggy runtime and a few pacing issues, which means it sometimes threatens to turn from a fun romp into a bit of a slog. – Patrick Cremona, Radio Times

Were it 80 minutes, its sins could largely be seen as forgivable, but somehow it manages to be nearly an hour longer than that and it feels every moment of that running time. – Kyle Pinion, ScreenRex

Will we want more ?

I wouldn’t be opposed to seeing what happens next. – Douglas Davidson, Elements of Madness

[It leaves] itself open for a sequel that, frankly, it doesn’t need or deserve. – Brian Lloyd, entertainment.ie

Cruella  releases in theaters and streams on Disney+ with Premium Access on May 28, 2021.

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Movie Review: ‘Cruella’

An interesting thought occurred to me as I sat down to watch Craig Gillespie’s “ Cruella .”

I am not a studied acolyte of the works of Dodie Smith. Or of Bill Peet’s animated classic, let alone Glenn Close’s two turns as the nefarious Cruella de Vil. So, it would seem natural that my indoctrination to this classic debutante would have to occur in Hollywood’s oft-dipped character origin story.

Craig Gillespie and Emma Stone make a formidable creative team as they weave a story from Cruella’s not-so-humble beginnings and her rise to the top of the fashion world.

Though the film starts in the late 1950s with Estella de Vil as a child, pranking her way through school, the film primarily is set in the fashionable West End of London in the swinging 1970s. Dana Fox (“What Happens in Vegas”) and Tony McNamara’s (“The Favourite”) script (based on a story by Aline Brosh McKenna (“The Devil Wears Prada”), Kelly Marcel (“Saving Mr. Banks,” “Venom”) and, Steve Zissis) serves up striking characters and madcap hijinks in an effort to see Cruella come into her own . . . hair.

Emma Stone, as the adolescent Cruella, has had to navigate rough waters. She is fueled by a trauma that she did wrong and is supported by two loveable rapscallions, brothers Jasper (Joel Fry) and a delicious Paul Walter Hauser as Horace.

An engaging warmth develops between the trio that Gillespie taps into, even as Cruella ‘advances’ in her career, owing much to the imbibed Gerald (Jamie Dementriou). The steps, or missteps, that Cruella takes are genuine and genuinely funny. There’s a sharp sarcasm and wit about their banter.

“Cruella” skirts the line of being a heist type film, an homage to the era in which the film is set, and is a robust character study in which a simple word translates into nefarious plans. For Emma Thompson’s Baroness, the sharp clip here or the “don’t say ‘thank you’” comment denotes that she has no time for pedantic antics or people. And yet, she’s surrounded by exactly that, most notably Andrew Leung’s Jeffrey and Kayvan Novak’s Roger.

That is until Estella comes into the Baroness’ life – “Finally, someone who can sing the Baroness’ tune!” (No, that’s not a quote from the movie; that’s the author shouting that something went right.)  Yes, the typical “growing into the role” type story thread gives us a chance to see Stone bring the character to life.

In a way, we get to see what makes both the baroness and Cruella tick – for Thompson, she’s a static character, acting with her eyes, facial tics, and body language; for Stone, a smirk and a look of familiarity, or devilishness make her marks. Both characters are allowed to show their smarts. The lush score from Nicholas Britell and pop music from the 1970s only adds more layers of welcome complexity to the characters.

However, this is where the film starts to run amok just a tad. The 134-minute run time was a bit too generous. I should note that, visually, the film, shot in a grey pallor , is accented with pops of color; it doesn’t waste the run time. But, the devil is literally in the details – there’s too much room for characters to develop in “Cruella.” Much like a ping-pong match, the lobs and returns just got to be too much.

Despite my reservations, there’s the aforementioned ‘warmth’ in Cruella’s character. The story uses that foundation with which to earn our empathy. Hauser channeled his inner Bob Hoskins in his cockney accent, the fact that he studied the former’s performance in “Hook” as a ground for this character. However, the foundation is mainly supported in Mark Stong’s understated performance and John McCrea’s Artie. To say more would be to give away some of the best parts of the film.

“Cruella,” opening in theatres and on Disney Plus with Premier Access today, has a strong performance from crucial characters matched with Gillespie’s crisp direction. The characters and their razor claws on the ready-to-attack at the slightest turn or crooked lip are exceptionally well-defined.

The story, unfortunately, isn’t as crisp or sharp. But it is very, very witty. And for that reason, I am Recommending “Cruella.”

• Movie Review: Cruella

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[…] first film; they both serve as window dressing as characters that, perhaps, belong to Disney’s “Cruella” as much as they belong […]

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Movie Review: Cruella (2021)

• Vincent Gaine
• Movie Reviews
• --> August 2, 2021

While Cruella de Vil is an iconic Disney villain, is there much potential in showing the origin story of a character whose fashion sense leads to her wanting to skin 101 Dalmatians? The answer is a yes as prominent as the eponymous character’s bi-colored hair, as director Craig Gillespie and screenwriters Dana Fox and Tony McNamara, along with a killer cast, deliver a delightfully dynamic and deliciously de Villish dance macabre of duality, identity and fashion, plus bits with dogs.

Much like the director’s previous feature “ I, Tonya ,” Cruella tells the story of a familiar character but gives her some new twists. The young Cruella (Tipper Seifert-Cleveland, “Emily and the Magical Journey”), or Estella as she starts out, is given a tragic but not overly sentimental backstory. Raised by a loving and supportive mother Catherine (Emily Beecham, “ Berlin, I Love You ”), Estella is precocious without being annoying and mature without being creepy. Her early school career demonstrates her defiance and encounters with authority, and while she is not without love or compassion, a raw deal leads her to an opportunistic life of crime where dreams give way to pragmatism. As a young adult, Estella’s (Emma Stone, “ The Favourite ”) burgeoning ambition and ruthlessness are balanced with loyalty and devotion, and it helps that her adversary the Baroness (Emma Thompson, “ Last Christmas ”) proves to be far worse in the questionable character stakes. The battle of wits between Estella and the Baroness is hugely enjoyable, and develops the film’s interest in identity as Cruella emerges as a weapon for Estella and then steadily takes over the film, without losing the audience’s sympathy.

Emma Stone energizes Estella/Cruella with a magnificent relish, her genius, ambition and charisma crackling around her like an electromagnetic field that both draws and repels those she encounters. In this Battle of the Emmas, Thompson matches Stone for every arched eyebrow and haughty put-down, leaving no scenery unchewed as she withers those around her with supreme superciliousness. Jasper (Joel Fry, “ In the Earth ”) and Horace (Paul Walter Hauser, “ BlacKkKlansman ”) are expanded beyond their original roles as bumbling sidekicks, becoming the family that Estella/Cruella lacks. Mark Strong (“ 1917 ”) is on reliably solid form as the Baroness’ valet John, and there is great support from the likes of John McCrea (“The Sandman” TV series), Kayvan Novak (“ Four Lions ”) and Kirby Howell-Baptiste (“ A Dog’s Purpose ”). There’s also perhaps a surprisingly fond treatment of dogs, who feature as threats, companions and obstacles, with the digital rendering of these animals only briefly distracting.

The film does have its flaws. The story could have been more efficiently told which would have given the film a beneficially shorter running time, whereas at two hours fourteen minutes there are points where it drags. There is a late reveal that is so deus ex machina that it may induce groans of “Really?” from the viewer. Some nods to “101 Dalmatians” feel like nothing more than nods, and a mid-credits sequence might point to the familiar story but frankly another film focused on Cruella herself seems like more fun, due to the delicious designs and Machiavellian machinations on display here.

On the display front, Gillespie and director of photography Nicolas Karakatsanis deliver stunning visuals throughout. A tumble down a slope is intercut with charging dogs; a crane shot follows a trio of intrepid children in and out of an abandoned building; a montage of Estella trying to make suggestions to her boss is both funny and touching; a stellar prolonged single take through the various floors and corridors of a department store truly brings the viewer into Estella’s world.

Getting into this world is important, because appreciating her position helps align the viewer with her schemes and ambition. In this regard, Cruella is an important feminist film because it takes the position that girls don’t have to be sugar and spice and all things nice. The Baroness is a tough adversary, but Cruella is no Cinderella, with little interest in having courage or being kind. Ambition and revenge, and to a lesser extent fame and fortune, are her driving forces. In the context of a crime caper, which interweaves fashion designs with heists and confidence tricks, this is quite standard for male protagonists but still relatively rare for women. Cruella has no romantic interest, and her various associates are drawn into her orbit largely by force of will. As a result, the audience are also drawn in, and particular moments (especially one involving a vault and a delivery from South America) might have the viewer giggling with glee because of the triumph of our antiheroine. Cruella is a thoroughly female protagonist (rather than a woman filling a man’s role), literally decides who she is and what she is going to do. As well as the stylistic flourishes noted earlier, Gillespie wisely reins it in at times: A long take on Cruella’s face as she delivers a monologue expresses a clear and unapologetic acceptance of her lot in life as well as a declaration of identity and her role in the world. Would that all characters of any gender were permitted such authority.

Furthermore, the film continues Disney’s surprisingly progressive identity politics. The supporting cast includes various people of color, who get to be people rather than tokens. More intriguingly, Cruella delivers an inclusive approach to gender fluidity. Estella/Cruella herself indicates that identity is influenced by choice, and McCrea’s character Art is explicitly non-binary. The relationship between Art and Cruella makes Art far more than a cypher, and it makes a sequel (already in preproduction) all the more enticing. The inclusivity of Cruella demonstrates the potential for established intellectual property like this — the audience come for the familiarity, and then we leave with something more.

Tagged: criminal , fashion , novel adaptation , orphan , prequel

Dr. Vincent M. Gaine is a film and television researcher. His first book, Existentialism and Social Engagement in the Films of Michael Mann was published by Palgrave MacMillan in 2011. His work on film and media has been published in Cinema Journal and The Journal of Technology , Theology and Religion , as well as edited collections including The 21st Century Superhero and The Directory of World Cinema .

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Don’t Mistake Cruella for Just Another Disney Film 

Here’s what you need to know about Cruella, the latest Disney live-action movie to hit theaters: It is not a fairytale. There are no princesses, talking snowmen, or magical godmothers to save the day. There is no love story, no promise of a happy ending. The main character is kind of an asshole for most of the movie. 

Cruella is, however, a delicious revenge tale. A gritty coming-of-age period piece. A high-stakes heist that could rival Ocean’s 11. It’s everything you loved about The Devil Wears Prada , but darker. (Even Miranda Priestly would draw the line at killing puppies for a fur coat.) This version of Cruella may be fur-free —the movie explains the whole Dalmatian connection—but still. The fact people even think she’s capable of it says enough.

Emma Stone as Cruella de Vil. 

Emma Stone stars as Estella, an aspiring designer who makes her way in the world through picking pockets and other petty crimes with her found family, Jasper (Joel Fry) and Horace (Paul Walter Hauser). After a chance meeting with the Baroness (Emma Thompson), the head of a legacy fashion house, Estella lands a dream job working for her. But the relationship between Estella and the Baroness eventually sours, and it inspires the former to transform into Cruella—a more bold, maybe even evil version of herself. 

“To me, it’s such a great narrative to see these two powerful women,” says Cruella director Craig Gillespie of the dynamic between Stone and Thompson, which drives the plot of the film. “It’s just about them being at the top of their game.” Exactly—it rocks. 

Disney fans won’t be disappointed. There are plenty of Easter eggs to the original animated movie, as well as Glenn Close’s 1996 live-action remake, to thrill even the most diehard Mouseketeer. But the PG-13 movie feels removed and unique enough from the family-friendly entertainment corporation’s usual fare that you’ll forget halfway through that this all came from a 1961 animated story about puppies. 

That was mostly intentional, according to Gillespie. Below the director tells Glamour how he approached the script, what it was like working with the two greatest Emmas in Hollywood, and more. 

Glamour: Being on set with Emma Stone and Emma Thompson must have been so much fun. Was there anything that surprised you about working with them?

Craig Gillespie: It was amazing to work with the two of them. They are such versatile powerhouses, and the interesting thing was figuring out the dynamic of their characters together. It’s the most exciting part of the film. Cruella’s such a gregarious, flamboyant character, and Emma Stone would give me all these different energy levels from 0 to 10. We had to figure out, “Where’s the Cruella that fits the tone of this movie?”  

And then Emma Thompson comes in. We found with her, the more refined and specific the movement—a slight eyebrow, a head turn, or the bite of a cucumber, the tiniest little details—gave us so much power. The stillness of her was really surprising against Cruella. It quickly became the dynamic that worked so well, and it’s funny because Emma Thompson is such a gregarious person. To see her distill it down to these minute little moments was fun. 

Where on a scale of 1 to 10 did you and Emma Stone decide to land? Because her Cruella felt like a 10, in the best way possible.

It was not the 10. [Laughs.] I don’t think I realized until we started shooting the complexity of her performance. There are several Cruellas—there’s the Cruella in the red dress, which is really Estella discovering a character. She’s putting on the character of Cruella and winging it with the Baroness, so she has a pretty heightened performance there. But in the next scene, she’s going through emotional trauma and becomes this dark, alienating Cruella. And then we get to a Cruella that has to morph between the Estella and the Cruella—she becomes a more fully formed human being. The character has all these complexities, so there would be different heightened versions. I think probably that red dress would be the 10.  It was fun to watch, because it’s been a minute since I’ve seen a movie where things were dialed up in that way. One thing I also enjoyed was that parts of the movie felt like an homage to great heist films, like Ocean’s 11. Can you speak to that?  

I had to do a heist education, which was mostly the Ocean’s 11 stuff. I wanted to figure out, how much does the audience need to know what’s going on? And as I watched those movies, I realized you actually don’t know anything. The more you keep the audience in the dark, the intrigue is there. 

We’ve got this whole “bringing down the Baroness” agenda going on through the second act, but you really don’t know anything about how they’re going to do it. I was hoping the audience would still stay engaged. That’s where I did a lot of my homework with the heist films—to see that the trick of them is to keep the audience in the dark.

Emma Thompson as the Baroness, Cruella’s rival

I talked with the movie’s makeup artist, Nadia Stacey, about the film’s incredible looks. What was it like collaborating from your end?  

I pulled all this reference from the ’70s and the punk era, and Nadia embraced it immediately. I think because I was like, and not in a negative way, “Stop thinking like we’re doing a Disney film. We’re doing a period piece, coming-of-age story.” She went for it and had all these amazing references. Cruella, as a character, is never going to do the same hairstyle twice or the same makeup. It’s natural she would always be mixing it up. There was so much jammed into this film that she just ran with it. There’d be days where Cruella would turn up, and I’d see the look for the first time and be like, “Awesome. Looks great. Let’s go.” 

Is there a moment or a scene you feel best captures the spirit of the movie? If you had to pull out one and put it in a time capsule, which would you choose?  

I approached this like an indie film, even though it was massive, and there was always a lot of spontaneity and fluidity. There’s a big scene, it’s kind of the emotional climax of the film, when Estella goes to the fountain at the end of the second act. It’s a three-minute monologue, which is very hard for an actor to stand there and do with nobody else. Emma Stone is so talented, and I had no fear that she would be able to deliver. But I wanted her to be in a comfortable place and have the space to do it, so I sent her a piece of music that emotionally resonated with me. We had designed the scene to be done in several shots, but after listening to that music I called her and said, “I changed my mind. I’m just going to do handheld with one camera.” It meant she had to do the whole speech in one take. And then I said, “We’re going to shoot it at dusk, so you have 20 minutes.” [ Laughs. ]

Last question: What do you hope people take away from seeing the movie?

It’s two things. First, I love these two incredibly strong women going head-to-head. To me, it’s such a great narrative to see these two powerful women. It’s uniquely their story. There’s no subplot, there’s no love interest. It’s just about them being at the top of their game, and I love that part of it. And second, it’s really fun. It’s just a lot of fun.

Anna Moeslein is the senior entertainment editor at Glamour. Follow her on Instagram @annamoeslein . 

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

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Cruella the movie would be better if Cruella the villain was badder

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This review of Cruella originally ran to coincide with the film’s theatrical release and launch as a Premiere Access rental release. It has been updated to reflect the film’s general release on Disney Plus.

Of all the Disney villains out there, Cruella De Vil has perhaps the most simple motivation: she wants a luxurious spotted coat, and she is willing to murder a lot of puppies to get it. That’s true in the 1956 novel, the 1961 animated movie, two Disney live-action movies, the Disney Channel Original franchise The Descendants , and her appearance in ABC’s Once Upon a Time . She is persistent and consistent about her love of fur, which is part of the reason she works so well as a villain.

Cruella De Vil isn’t necessarily a character who requires an in-depth backstory — what more do you need to know besides the fact that she’s willing to kill puppies? — but with Cruella , from I, Tonya director Craig Gillespie, the iconic villainess gets the origin-story treatment. And even though his film is dragged down by its criminally long runtime and weirdly sympathetic sob story, Cruella is a delightful romp full of fashionable heists and over-the-top theatrics. Does it work as an origin story for a familiar villain? Not really, but it’s a pretty damn fun time.

[ Ed. note: This review contains minor setup spoilers for Cruella. ]

Cruella follows mild-mannered fashionista-wannabe Estella (Emma Stone) as she navigates a tragic childhood and eventually lands a job at a design house in 1960s London. Her new employer is the notorious fashion mogul the Baroness (Emma Thompson), who’s basically The Devil Wears Prada ’s Miranda Priestly, but without any semblance of a moral compass. After Estella discovers how the Baroness wronged her in the past, she concocts a plan to usurp the Baroness’s empire — and that means indulging in her vile, conniving side, which her mother treated as an independent visitor named “Cruella.” Together with her friends Jasper ( In The Earth ’s Joel Fry) and Horace (Paul Walter Hauser), Estella transitions to her Cruella identity and whips up increasingly elaborate plans to take down the Baroness.

The movie’s entire first half hour is completely unnecessary. There are a lot of scenes of Estella as a child (with her funky black-and-white hair), but none of them ever really pay off. Most of what she sets up through action and voiceover could be handled with a few lines of dialogue, or a single flashback. But Gillespie gives us enough of child-Cruella to flesh out a completely separate movie. Tonally, that first act feels like one, too — a sort of anti- Matilda where a precocious young girl pushes back at her bullies by being an even bigger bully, only to get kicked out of a posh private school. Then through a series of unfortunate events, she ends up living as a squatter in an abandoned building, surviving by committing petty crimes. That whole pre-origin-story origin story just drags the movie down, even if on its own it could make for a fun Disney Channel Original Movie.

But thankfully, once Estella starts working for the Baroness, the movie finds its footing. Even in the early parts, before Estella’s dark side takes over, the fashion-house antics are compelling, and they rapidly set up the stage for a designer showdown. As Cruella, she launches a crusade to finish the Baroness’s career once and for all, which means orchestrating increasingly complex fashion escapades as she plans the debut of her own fashion line. The heists are deliciously elaborate, the costumes gorgeously wacky, and Stone’s increasingly dramatic performance as Cruella is divine, as she drawls out her “darlings” and saunters with devilish elegance. It’s one ruse after another, each punctuated by moments of Estella working for the Baroness, before she fully embraces her inner villainess. While the middle part of the movie is certainly the most fun, the last heist is where all the little pieces of the grand Cruella De Vil persona come together impressively — but it’s also the moment where the movie undermines Cruella as a character.

Cruella is a memorable and lasting villain because of how unapologetically bad she is. But within this movie, all the bad things she does are posited as okay, because the target of her vengeance is even worse. The main problem isn’t that Cruella does some bad things — it’s actually that what she does isn’t nearly bad enough for a famous villain. She never really does anything too terrible, beyond some trespassing, vandalism, and theft. Sure, Cruella is mean to her lackeys, forceful to the people in her life, and incredibly conniving, but the jump from pointed revenge at one specific person to puppy-murderer never actually happens — it’s never even implied. Instead of unleashing the main character’s bad side in all its wicked, wild glory, the film saddles the villainess with a sob story . Cruella could be a compelling villain origin story, full of fashionable heists, fun performances, and a flair for the dramatic — that is, if Cruella actually turned into a villain.

Cruella is now streaming on Disney Plus.

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A Battle of Wits and Knits: Despite Its Intentions, ‘Cruella’ Proves Why the Baddies Are More Fun

By K. Austin Collins

K. Austin Collins

“Your name is Estella,” her mother says. “Not Cruella .” Not yet, anyway. Disney’s Cruella , headlined by Emma Stone , is named for its would-be villain rather than for the 90-something Dalmatian puppies she’s tried to dognap in the name of fashion, time and again, over the years. The original Cruella would probably have preferred a biopic more akin to The Devil Wears Pongo . But in line with Maleficent , another of Disney’s recent villain revamps, it’s our old ideas about these bad guys — these bad women — that are getting skewered rather than the women themselves. Those old caricatures have been rendered into last season’s sales rack relics — because Disney isn’t in the business of glorifying villains. At least, not anymore. And not directly. 

Related: How to Stream Cruella Online

But there’s the rub. The old villains are fun! Rather, they became fun. No one, probably not even deer hunters, wound up rooting for the guy who killed Bambi’s mother. But Uncle Scar? A saucy bitch. Jafar? A literal snake by the end but, really, from the start. Ursula: my octopus teacher. These legendary baddies are all a little more interesting than the heroes of their respective stories. Enticingly vampy, stylishly cruel, stocked with character motivations, surely, but not of the kind that offer much in the way of an appeal to their inner psychologies. The arched-brow barbs of their wit, the claws so befitting of their personalities: This was the pleasure and the purpose, the engineering that allowed us to align ourselves with the unlikely triumphs of the good guys while reveling — curious, tantalized, entertained — in the outlandishness of the bad.

Cruella de Vil: no exception. Originally envisioned by Dodie Smith, in her 1956 novel, The Hundred and One Dalmatians ; modeled in the 1961 animated adaptation of that book after the demonized but notoriously fascinating Tallulah Bankhead ; then later revived in the 1996 live-action feature and its sequel into a gorgeous piece of pop grotesque — even her gloves were adorned with acrylic claws — by a campy, unhinged Glenn Close: Cruella has seen her share of renditions and mild revisions. But not until the new Cruella was her ostensible evil given a purpose, a backstory, a solution to the problem of her bloodthirst for spotted-pup skins — none of which seemed especially mysterious for a rich fashion maven whose taste predates the ethics of modern anti-fur campaigns, but here we are.

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Cruella takes us back — way back, to the time before Cruella lived up to that name, and way, way before she could afford a ride as chic as a Panther De Ville. It takes it back to a time when “Cruella” was just a mother’s nickname for a misbehaving young girl, a child whose intelligence and love of fashion were clear from the get, but whose constant trips to the headmaster’s office and growing scroll of demerits at school threatened to prevent any of that promise from paying off in adulthood. She was, as we too often say, a “rebel,” constantly letting her mother down. But it wasn’t her mother she was challenging, the adult Cruella, narrating her life story, tells us early on. “It was the world.”

And so: the world. Through a series of unfortunate events — a tragic shock, a shabby London childhood fit for a Dickens novel, and so on — we get the ins and outs of Cruella’s slow embrace of her mischievous alter ego, as well as a tour of her growing wiles, her still-burning aspirations for a career in fashion. We learn just how it is that a pair of co-conspirator lugs, Jasper (Joel Fry) and Horace (Paul Walter Hauser, funny as ever), become mainstays in her life. Most pertinent, however, is her rise to power — a story built, surprisingly and not, on a veritable death match against another woman: Baroness von Hellman (Emma Thompson), titular icon of Estella’s dream job, the House of Baroness.

So begins a battle of wits and knits, a vying for power in which the “villain” doesn’t get a clean makeover so much as displace the badness onto another villain — in this case, another woman. Cruella was directed by Craig Gillespie, best known, until now, for the image-reorienting I, Tonya , which, very much like Cruella , wrested a public enemy’s story back from the public and and gave the enemy a chance to tell that story on her own terms, racking up all the slights and humiliations that made her who she is . Maybe she’s born with it? Nope — she, like Cruella, was manufactured by circumstance. But the movie made sure to give her just enough inner light, that pinch of redemptive potential, to overcome it all, no matter the movie’s attitude toward the other women in her life, no matter its caricatures of that looming pile of loaded “circumstance.”

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You don’t have to buy into that dynamic for a movie like Cruella to be entertaining, which it often enough is, talky and relatively quick on its feet, ably cast with great supporting actors (Mark Strong, among them) and, of course, a few cute dogs. Credit is also due to the music licensing budget, which overloads the story with classics (Nancy Sinatra’s “ These Boots Were Made for Walkin’, ” the Zombies’ “ Time of the Season ,” Nina Simone’s “ Feeling Good ,” most notably, the Stooges’ “ I Wanna Be Your Dog ,” which, ha!) that, on the other hand, seem to have left the movie’s CGI budget out to dry. 

The harsh irony of this operation, however, is that it’s Cruella, not poor li’l Estella, who proves most fun to watch, somewhat on purpose, but only somewhat. Stone, fluctuating accent notwithstanding, is plausibly two-sided, in the way that Anne Hathaway’s harrowed Prada heroine was: frumpy-chic in one scene, a Pygmalion miracle in the next. Comparison to Glenn Close’s Cruella — who remains yet to be outdone by any drag queen tempted to try — wouldn’t be fair; this isn’t that movie. But Stone is relishing the bit, in her way, and so is Thompson, with her mean little one-liners (“Gratitude is for losers”). 

The movie can’t help but reinforce what it’s supposedly trying to revise, however, in part because — if the actors are any indication — it’s more fun to play bad. It’s more fun to be the mean queen, dismissive in ways you can’t (or shouldn’t) be in everyday life, with all your witty comebacks already prewritten, your memeable fashions designed expressly to inspire your inner witch. Cruella is never more galvanizing than its petty tit-for-tat and power wrangling. It’s never more pleasurable than when Cruella crashes a fashion gala in a garbage truck, dressed like so much rubbish, to figuratively shit on her foe’s front lawn. 

For all its fleshing out of the truth of who Cruella “really is,” the movie can’t escape the pure fact of the bad girl being more fun to watch than her normie alter ego. Cruella ’s time and setting allow the movie to render its heroine into an emblem of the Swinging Sixties and beyond, a woman too cool for institutions, too savvy to harness power the old, monied way — but equally apt, somehow, to take advantage of the people around her (so, still somewhat victim to the old norms). Yeah, sure, the movie puts up a little bit of a fight, makes her atone in all the right ways, does what it has to do to remain plausible as a movie for kids, to the extent that children’s fare is still Disney’s main business. I’m honestly not so sure. 

But someone’s gotta win, right? And someone’s gotta lose. Ideally, in the framework set forth by I, Tonya and Cruella and their ilk, it’s the monied snobs, the evil power brokers who’ll stop at nothing to remain on top, who’ll lose — the old Cruella among them, in theory. But by the end of Cruella , the night, as they say, is still young, and the potential for a sequel is very much abrew. Maybe evil loses. Maybe not. There’s still time for Cruella to glue on the acrylics and get to work. If she does, I’ll be waiting.

Cruella is in theaters and streaming on Disney+ on Friday, May 28th.

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The best horror movie of 2024 arrives with a perfect 100% critic score.

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Every year there are a few buzzed-about horror movies released, but I haven’t seen this much hype for one in a good long while. The movie is Longlegs, hitting theaters this upcoming weekend, and it’s a strange name for what appears to be an incredibly terrifying, incredibly good film.

As it stands, with 25 reviews in, Longlegs has a perfect 100% critic score on Rotten Tomatoes , not a very common achievement for a mainstream horror film. Here’s a synopsis of the movie:

“In the 1990s, new FBI agent Lee Harker was assigned to an unsolved case involving the Satanic serial killer known as Longlegs. As the investigation becomes more complicated with occult evidence uncovered, Harker realizes a personal link to the killer and must act quickly to prevent another family murder.”

The cast is pretty great too. It stars Maika Monroe (It Follows), Alicia Witt (OG Dune), Blair Underwood (Rules of Engagement), Kiernan Shipka (The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina) and Nicholas Cage (everything). Monroe in particular is cementing her status as a true icon of horror after starring in both this as It Follows, which I’d consider to be an all-time great horror film, and one of my favorites. Cage as the killer (this is not a secret) is being praised as unsettling well beyond what we thought may have been possible from him.

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What’s so good about it? I was impressed with this high praise from Cinematic Reel’s David Gonzalez:

“Not since the likes of Zodiac and The Silence of the Lambs has a serial killer entry disturbed me the way Oz Perkins’ Longlegs did. It’s a psychologically relentless descent into the macabre that’s sure to crawl its way under your skin and never leave.”

I think my favorite piece of trivia about director Oz Perkins is that he played a character named “Dorky David” in Legally Blonde in 2001. But since then he’s directed a couple horror movies, but none that blew up the way we’re seeing here.

There were some early reactions to the movie in surprise screenings, and this one’s probably my favorite:

"No lie. Longlegs was so insane that a woman behind us started crying halfway thru lmao 10/10 movie."

For reference, here are some of the highest rated horror movies of last year, 2023, where none hit a full 100%:

• When Evil Lurks – 97%
• Huesera: The Bone Woman – 97%
• Attachment – 95%
• Talk to Me – 95%
• M3GAN – 93%
• Influencer – 92%

So, if you liked any of those, and this is scoring better, well, get ready. And these comparisons to Blair Witch, Silence of the Lambs and Zodiac are something else, as it’s not just a few people saying that, but many. I cannot wait. The movie is out July 12 in select theaters.

Follow me on Twitter , YouTube , and Instagram .

Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy .

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Stephen King Praises New 2024 Slasher Movie With One-Sentence Rave Review

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Stephen King gives another 2024 horror movie his stamp of approval ahead of its July 5 release amidst a slew of horror projects coming this year.

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Despicable Me 4 review: "Full of nostalgic value and Minion-induced hilarity"

GamesRadar+ Verdict

Offering heart and Minion-induced hilarity, this is another solid – if familiar – entry in the Despicable saga.

Why you can trust GamesRadar+ Our experts review games, movies and tech over countless hours, so you can choose the best for you. Find out more about our reviews policy.

Fourth installments in franchises can be tricky endeavors. Continue as before and you risk tedium; stray too far from the formula, and you might upset the fanbase. The good news with Despicable Me 4 (the sixth in the series, including two Minions spin-offs) is that intriguing new characters, settings and situations help keep the anti-villain antics engaging.

Pitted against Gru (Steve Carrell) this time is Maxime Le Mal, a blast from the supervillain-turned-secret agent’s crooked past. Voiced by Will Ferrell, Le Mal has the technology to turn anyone into a superpowered cockroach (including himself). 

When this flamboyant foe escapes incarceration, he comes looking for revenge on his former school rival, forcing Gru and family (including new baby Gru Jr) into witness protection. They briskly relocate to an Anti-Villain League safe house in upmarket suburbia and attempt to blend in. What ensues is a series of funny, if predictable, character clashes, principally between Gru and stuck-up, country-club-loving neighbor Perry (Stephen Colbert) and his wannabe-supervillain teen daughter Poppy (Joey King). 

However, it’s the bona-fide baddies who frequently steal the formulaic-but-fun show here. A Terminator 2-inspired supermarket chase involving a fearsome Cruella–esque vengeance-seeker amuses, as does a castle heist featuring an equally enraged wheelchair-bound crone. Yet these adrenalized antics are somehow upstaged by the side exploits of five augmented Mega-Minions, who blunderingly attempt to become superheroes. 

Series veteran Chris Renaud (who co-directs with Despicable Me lead animator Patrick Delage) ensures that there’s nostalgic value for older generations, notably in the surprisingly heartfelt, Tears for Fears-soundtracked finale. The addition of the cunning Gru Jr proves a deft move, too; the father/son, bonding/tormenting scenes bring a fresh (and at times touching) dynamic to proceedings.

Despicable Me 4 is released in US theaters on July 3 and in UK cinemas on July 12. 

For what else to add to your calendar, here's our breakdown of upcoming movies and 2024 movie release dates .

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Critic’s Pick

‘MaXXXine’ Review: Fame Monster

Mia Goth returns to Ti West’s horrorverse as an actress fleeing a mysterious stalker and a traumatic past.

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By Jeannette Catsoulis

A psychosexual thriller imagined in blood red and cocaine white, “MaXXXine,” the third installment in Ti West’s nostalgia-soaked slasher saga, is part grungy homage to 1980s Hollywood and part sleazy feminist manifesto. Darker, moodier and altogether nastier than its predecessors — “X” (2022) and, later that same year, “Pearl” — this hyperconfident feature is also funny, occasionally wistful and deeply empathetic toward its damaged, driven heroine.

That would be Maxine Minx (Mia Goth), the sole survivor of the dirty-movie cast massacred in “X.” Now a successful porn star, Maxine, eager to break into mainstream movies, has relocated to a Hollywood of spectacular seediness. It is 1985 and, as in real life, a killer known as the Night Stalker is terrorizing the city, the so-called Moral Majority is hyperventilating on the sidelines and rock musicians are fighting accusations of satanic intent. In one pungent shot of Maxine’s boot grinding her cigarette stub into the silent film sex symbol Theda Bara’s star on the Walk of Fame, West underscores the transience of the celebrity status that Maxine so desperately seeks.

“I will not accept a life I do not deserve,” she declares, repeating the mantra taught by her father, a preacher seen in speckled, black-and-white flashback. Securing a role on a low-grade horror sequel brings her under the wing of its industry-toughened director (a perfect Elizabeth Debicki). Yet Maxine is constantly distracted: Her friends are dying, and two homicide detectives (Bobby Cannavale and Michelle Monaghan) want to question her; a Louisiana gumshoe (Kevin Bacon, a skeevy vision in crumpled suits and gold-capped incisors) keeps randomly accosting her; and a mysterious, black-gloved stalker haunts the film’s shadows. No wonder Maxine is plagued by panicked recollections of her traumatic past.

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‘Second Chance’ Review: A Soothing Mantra of Himalayan Hope and Healing

At the top of the world, a young woman at her lowest ebb finds solace in simplicity, friendship and the sweet purring of a kitten in Indian writer-director Subhadra Mahajan's gorgeously restorative debut.

By Jessica Kiang

Jessica Kiang

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It’s hard to get a cellphone signal up in the high mountains of Himachal Pradesh, in Northern India. Especially in the dead of winter when deep snowdrifts absorb all sound and jagged encircling ridges form an impenetrably icy barrier. But without WiFi coverage, Subhadra Mahajan’s spectacular and serene “ Second Chance ” suggests, a different, deeper kind of connection is possible — to these stark, unearthly landscapes, to the people who’ve made their lives among them, and perhaps even to the self you might have lost touch with through trauma or tiredness, down in the busy, noisy world below. 

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DP Swapnil Suhas Sonawane’s monochrome photography is breathtaking in the best way: elegant without overtly imposing its artistry on already beautiful settings. And just like Nia herself, Mahajan’s tender, airy screenplay benefits from time spent away from the consideration of her trauma, when in lovely, graceful scenes of domesticity and humor, we follow Sunny playing or Bhemi cooking. Bhemi even has a little flirtation going with a twinkly-eyed local shepherd (Ganga Ram) who is unstinting in his praise of her fine-spun yarn and her delicious onion fritters, and with whom her conversations range from light joshing to more profound observations on the way their natural environment is changing.

“Our Mother Earth is depleted and sad,” says the shepherd wistfully. “If we continue to destroy her like this, it will be the end of us all.”

“Well, at least you’ve lived your life long enough,” replies Bhemi tartly. 

This is a remarkably accomplished debut feature, premiering in Karlovy Vary’s Proxima competition just a couple of months after Mahajan’s compatriot, Payal Kapadia, won the Grand Prix in Cannes for “All We Imagine as Light.” It may be too early to declare these two new female Indian filmmakers the vanguard of a movement, but their movies do share a certain, wise-beyond-their-years poetry. It’s exemplified in a wonderful moment in “Second Chance,” when Nia, horrified to find Bhemi doing the dishes under an outdoor tap in subzero weather is gently pranked into thinking the water is hot.

A few of the more effortfully dramatized moments, such as an awkward visit Nia pays to a recently married ex, or a confrontation with the guy who got her pregnant, are tentative and slightly stilted. But these exchanges are brief and their theatricality only serves to highlight the ease of the film’s natural register, which is murmured and grateful as an answered prayer. Up here, in the quiet, Mahajan’s film tells of a space where, if you need them, there are not just second chances, but second or third ones — infinite chances that stretch like snow-capped Himalayan peaks, as far as the eye can see.

Reviewed at Karlovy Vary Film Festival (Proxima). July 5, 2024. Running time: 104 MIN. 

• Production: (India) A Metanormal, Latent Pictures production. (World sales: Diversion, Bangkok.) Producer: Shyam Bora. Executive Producers: Swapnil Suhas Sonawane, Pan Nalin. Co-producers: Bhaskar Hazarika, Sidharth Meer, Naren Chandavarkar.
• Crew: Director, writer: Subhadra Mahajan. Camera: Swapnil Suhas Sonawane. Editor: Tinni Mitra. Music: Quan Bay.
• With: Dheera Johnson, Thakri Devi, Kanav Thakur, Ganga Ram,  Rajesh Kumar, Shaurya Bastola, Tarini Sud, Dr Bishan Dass Shashni, Yuki the cat. (Hindi, English, Kullavi dialogue)

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