Generations of kids have been left merrily traumatised by Cruella de Vil. The One Hundred and One Dalmatians villain is a rakish (in that she looks like a rake) fashion diva whose goals are as simple as her two dimbulb henchmen: she wants to turn some adorable Dalmatian pups into a fur coat. Her motives can be summarised as ‘dahhling, it’s fashion and I’m evil... what do you want from me?’ She puffs green smoke from her endless cigarettes and screeches around in a car that haunted all our nightmares. She’s Vivienne Westwood’s raging id without a driving license.
As it turns out, this Disney origin story wants a lot more from her. This bold but uneven prequel from I, Tonya’s Craig Gillespie is definitely not cut from the same cloth as the 1961 animation or the 1996 Glenn Close iteration. An early scene has a pack of slathering Dalmations – oh yes, the spotty pooches are kinda the baddies here – knocking the mum of puckish young Cruella (then going by her actual name, Estella) off a cliff. And if that all takes some swallowing, wait until it gets into a fiddly plot involving a prized pendant that no 12-year-old (apart from those with a solid grounding in inheritance law) will understand.
But if the script ploughs through every boring box-ticking exercise in the prequel handbook – ever wondered about the exact origins of Cruella’s erratic driving or why her mansion is called Hell Hall? Me neither – there’s a tonne of fun to be had in Emma Stone’s magnificently arch performance. She’s a needle in the movie’s arm as the character morphs from the orphaned, fashion-forward Estella (played by Tipper Seifert-Cleveland) to a pickpocketing Dickensian-style scamp in a London squat to a genius designer who moonlights as a black-and-white-haired style anarchist with the adopted name Cruella. Stone trowels on the high-camp villainy with a cut glass English accent that recalls one of the posher Redgraves.
And she needs to be on top form to stop Emma Thompson stealing the show as narcissistic fashion designer Baroness von Hellman, Cruella’s employer and possible ticket to glory. Thompson’s most deliriously potty role since she played an actual pot in Beauty and the Beast, she’s a couture vulture who feasts on the ideas of her acolytes. The sight of the pair facing off as mistress and apprentice turned vicious rivals spilling out in a series of dizzying set pieces is Cruella’s greatest joy. ‘I’m intrigued… and that never happens’, purrs the Baroness in between casually electrocuting her staff. Someone get her into a movie with Phantom Thread’s Reynolds Woodcock.
It’s all headily backdropped by London’s style temples of the ‘60s and ‘70s. There’s a dissonant joy in watching a Disney movie that wears the influences of Vivienne Westwood, Nicolas Roeg, Tatler and The Clash on its skin tight sleeve. And with its fantastically extra costume design from Jenny Beavan (Gosford Park) and an authentic recreation of Liberty department store as ground zero for cool, it’s a heady evocation of a buzzy, bygone London.
Yet for a film that lives by the principle that being ‘normal is the cruellest insult of them all’, there’s also a lot here that feels achingly conventional. The strenuous effort to humanise all its characters – apart from the Baroness, happily – results in the relatable Horace (Paul Walter Hauser) and hapless Jasper (Joel Fry) offering more henchmen HR grumbles than laughs. And spare a thought for poor Mark Strong, a devilish performer who is straitjacketed in the functional role of taciturn sidekick who drives the plot – a Bran Flake in a bowl of Fruit Loops.
Ultimately, Cruella ends up feeling like a film torn between being daring and sticking to convention: a helium balloon that keeps getting dragged back under the weight of its own narrative ballast. Like Cruella’s occasionally piebald hair, it’s very much a movie of two halves: fun to look at, if a little fleeting.
Out in cinemas and Disney+ Premier Access worldwide May 28.
