Review of Cruella (2021) by Saucyninja007 — 29 May 2021

A tonally inconsistent, dragged out mess with questionable visuals, lazy writing, and an overbearing soundtrack. "Cruella" bounces back and forth between goofy heist moments and "serious" moments so frequently and jarringly that ultimately all of the moments come across as comedic.

Is this movie for kids? The creators of the movie don't even know. CGI is inexplicably used for some dogs in the movie (but not others?). I will admit that the costumes were well done. If only more focus was given to the script.

Most charcters are archetypes defined by one personality trait, character motivations are weak at best, the dialogue is by-the-numbers, and the only surprising moments in the story either undermine the rest of the story or just feel completely unbelievable.

There is a plot twist I will not spoil that is eye-rolling to say the least. All these faults would be more tolerable if the movie was not so darn long. The story of this movie did not need 2 hours to tell.

And the majority of those 2 hours is saturated with unnecessary voice over (often explaining what is already obvious visually) and pop music. I liked the soundtrack but the movie relied on it too heavily and did not usually integrate it with the visuals effectively.

I can't really recommend this movie to anybody. Emma Stone tried her best to salvage this disaster but was cringe-worthy to be honest.