Review of Cinderella (2015) by Drauchdoes2015 — 03 Apr 2015

Another offering in a recent string of live-action adaptations of Disney classics, Kenneth Branagh's Cinderella manages to (barely) avoid feeling completely devoid of distinction, though it is still marred by a stifling loyalty to it's hallowed source material.

Two things save Cinderella from the fate of lifelessness so often met by remakes of revered works: (1) The holistic embrace of an innocent, almost naive method of presentation, an approach that makes the proceedings feel intrinsically, and subversively, pure, and (2) an ensemble cast that lends surprisingly decent performances across the board (Lily James and Cate Blanchett deserve particular distinction).

There are a few other elements of Cinderella that propel it ever so slightly beyond mediocrity. The dialogue is thankfully not entirely dumbed down for younger audiences, instead the screenplay is a verbose flutter of an almost Shakespearean vernacular (what more could we expect from Branagh?). There is also the production design and costuming, a bright confection of color and pageantry that invades nearly every scene of Cinderella and makes the picture at least visually stimulating.

However, the aesthetic design ITSELF remains pretty run-of-the-mill. There are no stylistic risks or visual flourishes that deviate enough from the norm to make sitting through Cinderella on mute little more than simply palatable. Cinderella doesn't escape groan inducing familiarity either, with nearly every scene playing out with ENTIRE predictability. Some slight additions to the story only momentarily change the direction of the plot or, worse so, wind up feeling like needless detours transparently existent to avoid a xerox effect.

There is also the nagging issues of the original story itself. Cinderella has always been, though colorful, resplendent, and respectably un-corruptible, a tale as devoid of legitimately engaging conflict as Disney's works have ever been. Cinderella is a sympathetic lead figure, and the injustice she endures from her step-mother is given new depth in this retelling, yet the tale still paints the evils of cruelty regrettably one-dimensionally, a move that feels hazardously old-fashioned and one Disney as a whole has been prone to make recently (the term I would use is 'risk-less reinvention').

By no means an experience entirely worth rehashing, Cinderella still surpasses expectations enough to BARELY recommend, and only as a reluctant viewing with the family or a small child. And it goes without saying that the decades old animated entry is the superior version.