Review of Cinderella (2015) by Heatherm — 21 Mar 2015

This new version of Cinderella is a very straight retelling of the classic fairytale in line with the Disney animated version. Disney clearly goes to great lengths in the movie to hammer in their version of things as canonical, particularly maintaining the colour scenes and costuming to bring the cartoon to life. One of the best things I can write about this movie is just that it's visually stunning throughout. It does a wonderful job of bringing the animated magic to live action scenes, and everything about the costumes, sets, backgrounds, all of it are always gorgeous.

Notable departures from the animated version include Helena Bonham Carter's Fairy Godmother and the depth of the representation of the prince. Carter's Fairy Godmother is perhaps the only part of the movie that isn't played straight--she's delightfully haphazard about it, as if she isn't quite sure how she's going to pull this thing off. It ended up being charming and funny to watch, and it was probably my favourite part of the movie, particularly in combination with the fun special effects to show the transformations. I liked that the transformed animals retained so many of their animal traits as people--it contributed to the feeling that the Fairy Godmother was only just managing to transform them, and provided some nice visual humour.

The prince's story departed in that you get some back story of his situation at the palace, why he's having the ball to find a princess to marry, and the pressures that he's under. Robert Madden did a good job of making a living character out of the Prince, who doesn't even get a name in the original animated feature if I recall correctly. It was nice that Disney attempted to flesh out the story and breathe some romance into the fairy tale. He had conflicting motives and desires and it was interesting to see that play out. However, I don't think it ultimately worked, in part because there didn't seem to be a lot of real chemistry between the two lovers. Lily James' Cinderella was just so unfailingly nice that she didn't seem like a full character in the way that Madden's prince was. She has moments of despair, but not moments of doubt; without any kind of internal struggle to match the prince's, she just wasn't as interesting. Cate Blanchett's evil stepmother was also a bit too-dimensional, but Blanchett is just so good at that perfect stepmother smirk that I think I'd forgive her anything.

That said, the movie did what it set out to do. It recreated Disney's animated feature in gorgeous live action with magic special effects, a charming cast, and beautiful sets and costumes with a solid, straight retelling of the classic fairytale.