Review of Cinderella (2013) by Evangelos C — 15 Aug 2016

Too 'good' for its own good... Cinderella is surprisingly hard to rate. It seems to do everything right, and yet it feels very lacking.

There isn't a lot to the characters, first of all, all of which being specific to the point of looking like caricatures. The stepmother barely has any more character motivation and backstory than her non-comically ravenous daughters, which is 0. The prince is just 'lovely' from start to finish, so very bland. His father is probably the most complex character in the film, just because he's a little conflicted, not that we don't imagine how that goes.

Cinderella is, well, pathetic. Utterly so. She supposedly embodies the virtues of kindness, courage, and a bit of magic. This translates to letting rude, lowly and obnoxious strangers treating her with intense cruelty in her own house, and her taking it all in.

'Kindness' is to be irritatingly nice all the time no matter what, and obey all as if they were your masters. 'Courage' is to endure the unfair circumstances, even throw yourself to them for no good reason, but without having any plans to change it. 'Magic' is when all this inhumane level of idiocy is rewarded, for whatever reason. Just because of magic and a dull prince falling in love just by looks and some 'deep' whining on animal rights, Cinderella, her own worst enemy and slaver, ends up with a jolly happy ending.

The entire film looks like a collection of bad advice reaching religious levels. Do X and Y, that doesn't help but possibly worsens your life, then a miracle will happen!

I'd also like to add the prince really is quite the idiot for ignoring other mobility, easily insulting his planned wife. Can't recall who made those points, but that little kingdom could benefit from having allies in order to survive. Sure, love matters and that's fine. But total disregard of other kingdoms as a means to highlight just how bedazzled the prince is with Cinderella, that's just bad foreign politics and the other terrific bad advice this film offers.

Pacing also feels funny. It's so tightly woven and expected it looks hurried, even if it's not. Visuals are good.

It's a shame that Cinderella, the movie, lacks boldness and true creativity, lacking the life of other Disney projects like the Jungle Book, even Maleficent that tried to be original. This little motion picture gives us a protagonist with the brains of a sock puppet, requiring of magical forces to stick their wrinkly hands up its foothole just to passively carry her to happiness, rewarding how perfectly puppet-like Cindy is. She really is pathetic, and sadly, this comes out as traditional and fairy-tale like.

Even so I can't give a bad score to this due to this. No matter how tasteless the core is, there's good elements and craft. But I will say many will find it tremendously boring. Can't recall how different Disney's original Cinderella was, but in this day and era, the new one falls short.