Review of Cinderella (2013) by Kyle W — 21 Oct 2015

This really didn't need to happen, any more than the half a dozen other Disney titles due for live action remakes need to happen. Walt's take on "Cinderella" is one of the greatest films of all time, and the thought alone that the studio is trying to replace a timeless classic with this is a depressing one.

As a companion piece to the original, however, you'd be hard pressed to do better. Kenneth Branagh gives us a lovely, romantic, and refreshingly irony-free take on the classic yarn of girl wants ball, prince throws ball, girl rides pumpkin to ball and wins prince's heart only to have to leave before midnight never to see prince again until they are reunited by footwear.

There's something to be said for the deft hand which Branagh employs to simply tell the story well, eschewing Shrek-esque anachronisms or Maleficent-ish revisionisms for something that can only be described as warm, old-fashioned, Disney magic.

Lily James makes a lovely Cinderella, and Cate Blanchett dominates and chews the scenery appropriately every moment she's onscreen. This only goes so far, however. The animal subplot is, of course, nixed (fine by me - all the more reason to revisit those wonderful sequences from the original), which means the human characters (which have never been all that layered) must take center stage for the film's near 2 hour running time.

Efforts are made to give each and every one some real depth and nuance, but the simple charm of the film (and, indeed, the rags-to-riches tale on which it's based) doesn't want it. We really don't need to know the intricacies of how Cinderella's mother and father died, nor why the Stepmother is such a bitch.

And because these things are addressed, we start noticing other inconsistencies, like why do the carriage and footmen turn back into respective pumpkin and mice while the glass slippers remain tangible? These are questions you just don't want to think about watching a movie like this.

Fortunately, it may distract, but never properly ruins the magic Branagh casts over the proceedings.