|
How entertaining? ★☆☆☆☆
Thought provoking? ★☆☆☆☆ 27 February 2015
This article is a review of CINDERELLA.Seen at the Berlin International Film Festival 2015. (For more information, click here.)
|
“Sorrow can come to any kingdom, no matter how happy,” Fairy Godmother (Helena Bonham Carter)
Cate Blanchett in bad performance shock. One never thought those words would leave my keyboard. Would it surprise anyone if Blanchett was eventually spoken about in the same breath as Katherine Hepburn (whom she played in THE AVIATOR) or Meryl Streep? While the latter added her own original spin to a Disney baddie in the recent INTO THE WOODS, Cate has sputtered, churning out a cringey, off-key performance as the evil stepmother. Such a rare misstep cannot entirely be blamed on Ms Blanchett. Writer Chris Weitz (who ballsed up Philip Pullman’s HIS DARK MATERIALS) and director Kenneth Branagh offer an uninspired slog, alternating between the wooden and the excruciatingly hammy. Only the youngest of children are likely to unearth any kind of magic.
Cate Blanchett in bad performance shock. One never thought those words would leave my keyboard. Would it surprise anyone if Blanchett was eventually spoken about in the same breath as Katherine Hepburn (whom she played in THE AVIATOR) or Meryl Streep? While the latter added her own original spin to a Disney baddie in the recent INTO THE WOODS, Cate has sputtered, churning out a cringey, off-key performance as the evil stepmother. Such a rare misstep cannot entirely be blamed on Ms Blanchett. Writer Chris Weitz (who ballsed up Philip Pullman’s HIS DARK MATERIALS) and director Kenneth Branagh offer an uninspired slog, alternating between the wooden and the excruciatingly hammy. Only the youngest of children are likely to unearth any kind of magic.
|
|
|
|
|
Humour is so sparse that Rob Brydon as a cheeky painter pratfalling is to be relied upon. Everything is dialled to the max, as if playing to the rafters in the theatre. Expressions are big and cheesy and heavily signposted; dialogue expounded breathlessly (rather than passionately), as if just after having run a race the actors are forced onto the set to exclaim. CINDERELLA (2015) is a nuance vacuum.
Live action telling of the Disney animated classic gives nothing new for a modern audience. SHREK-style irony and clever spins on outdated notions of aspiration, class and a woman’s need to be rescued are absent. What if Cinderella had not been a Barbie-like beauty, what would have been her chances of relief? Fairy tales are ripe for allegory, and layering can be done so skilfully to not derail the narrative. Angela Carter’s THE COMPANY OF WOLVES (turned into a film by Neil Jordan in 1984) updates Red Riding Hood to something dark and unsettling. Fair enough if the Mouse House does not want to alienate its audience by making adult material; it has though in recent times played with Rapunzel to winning effect in the terrific TANGLED (2010) – a confident female lead determined to self-determine. (SNOWWHITE AND THE HUNTSMAN is a bold work in comparison to CINDERELLA.)
|
|
Tweaks to the legend are half-baked at best, brainless at worst. Lady Tremaine (Blanchett) conspires with the Grand Duke (Stellan Skarsgård) to have Prince Charming (Richard Madden – one of the few getting it right on screen) to marry someone other than Cinderella (Lily James). Actually her name is Ella, and is given the nickname “Cinderella”, by stepsister Anastasia (Holliday Grainger), because she has cinder soot on her face. For no logical reason, Ella embraces that moniker. She refuses to leave her life as a drudge, because it is her deceased parents’ home, yet she will abandon the name they gave her?!
Desperately chucking in a surfeit of thespians (Bonham Carter, Derek Jacobi, Ben Chaplin, etc.), who fail to enliven the dire material, is a sure sign of a movie dead on arrival.
|
|
Using these Google Adsense links help us keep Filmaluation free for all film and arts lovers.
|
|
|