Saw Cruella, a live-action reboot/reimagined prequel of 101 Dalmatians from the antagonist's perspective. So, we meet Cruella as a budding but rebellious fashionista, being kicked out of school and coming to the big city where she meets up with Horace and Jasper, not just semi-anonymous henchmen, but her Artful Dodger-style cockney friends. From there, the bulk of the film follows Cruella trying to upstage a villainous Baroness, the current reigning queen of the fashion world. The film is a lot of slightly empty fun, but it is fun though.
The fashion war gives rise to a bunch of fanciful costumes and outrageous set pieces which I enjoyed thoroughly. At one point Cruella literally stands on top of the Baroness, overshadowing her under her enormous, parachute-like dress. There's also a lot of deliciously campy super-villainy (on both Cruella and the Baroness's parts!) They both get to humiliate and outplay each other, craftily sabotaging and subverting their dress-related schemes.
I also enjoyed that they made Cruella genuinely unpleasant for a fair stretch of the film. With Maleficent, the reboot nice-ified the main character to the point of her not even being that interesting to me anymore. With this one, Cruella is ultimately sympathetic, but we do see real cruelty and indifference. There's a moment when her allies abandon her and I was completely on their side. Good show, Disney.
There's also a great queer character in this film in the form of Artie, a guy who owns a second-hand shop and dresses very femininely. This is a big step for Disney which, for all of its progressive posturing, is absurdly conservative with same-sex representation. Often we only get gay panic gags or throwaway, "oh my same-gendered partner would love that!"-type one-liners. Artie's character is probably permitted because he does not have a relationship, but his sort-of cross-dressing and arch mannerisms I feel count and are great to see. There's also a sub-theme of chosen families vs genetic families which will also resonate with many queer folks in the audience (and which may be an even more disruptive notion to the nuclear family than mere homo love.)
The only bum note is that since it's a Disney film, it kind of dithers in different philosophical directions. Yes there's talk of chosen families, but blood relations drive the plot. There's like girl-power stuff, and heist stuff, and there's kind of no point to it all. This is not a disaster (not every film has to present a philosophy, after all) but it makes it feel a little muddly to me. I sort of feel this is by design however. If it takes a strong and unambiguous stance on some topic which is even remotely controversial, it will turn off some part of its audience and that's precious dollars you know and we can't have that. Eh - this is a small thing.
I enjoyed the camp excesses of the film and the familiar 60s hits (despite how literally everyone dresses, the film is set in the 60s.) There's also a lot of arbitrary dog-related imagery and references which were fun to spot. Also plenty of references to 101 Dalmatians which I have fond memories of. These all made me feel smug and smart for spotting them. All in all a comfy, stylish film which I happily enjoyed.
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