I have to admit, I didn't have high expectations going into Cinderella. It's one of the more boring fairy tales for one, lacking much of the nastiness present in Little Red Riding Hood and Hansel and Gretel, and this latest Disney adaptation looked like it was going to be played worryingly straight. In an age where fairy tales have been told over and over again it's par for the course for new iterations to have a modern twist - you know, where Cinderella works at a coffee shop in New York and Prince Charming is a hobo or a well-groomed dog or something. Indeed, the myth has already been subverted by Disney at least twice in the past ten years, first with Enchanted and then, in much nastier fashion, with Into The Woods, which saw Cinderella get bored with her prince and join an anti-Giant hit squad instead. And now, having seen the film, I can say that my thoughts remain largely the same. It's a toothless, regressive film, one which will likely delight its guaranteed audience of young girls but will disappoint anyone expecting more.
I'll talk about the plot but I'm sure you know the score. Ella (Lilly James) lives happy life with parents (Ben Chaplin and Hayley Atwell), parents die, evil stepmother (Cate Blanchett) takes over, with irritating stepdaughters in tow (Sophie McShera and Holliday Grainger), and denies Ella (dubbed Cinder-Ella after she sleeps by a fireplace) a chance to hook up with royal hottie Richard Madden. Cinders decides fuck it, she'll try anyway, stumbles across her Fairy Godmother (Helena Bonham Carter) who gives her a sweet outfit and ride. She rocks up to the ball - late, I might add - and dazzles everyone with her ridiculously thin waist, then dashes home before the spell wears off, blah blah blah, prince finds her, happy ever after.
Technically it's almost flawless, in that everything the story needs happens with clockwork precision. The big set-pieces are well-handled, it all looks nice - particularly the costumes - and the CGI, while necessary, is never too intrusive. And the characters are pretty well-cast, even if some of the actors do run on autopilot (Helena Bonham Carter, I'm looking at you).
But it's also so boring, so sentimental, and does nothing to address some of the more problematic elements of the story. Consider how this princess holds up when compared to some of Disney's more recent female heroines - think Rapunzel, think Merida, think Anna and Elsa for God's sake. These women didn't need a prince to save them from their misfortunes, they did it themselves, and something bothers me about the way Cinderella just accepts her stepmother's abuse. I don't know, maybe it was a little unrealistic of me to hope that Disney would film the version where Cinderella feeds the stepsisters to the stepmother, Titus Andronicus-style, but I can't help but think that by refusing to add anything modern or dark, or even anything particularly funny, it's playing a far too safe game.
And this is Kenneth Branagh! It doesn't seem to fit the profile that he'd make something so lifeless. I suppose he's a man of tradition (his Shakespeare adaptations, for better or worse, are a world away from Michael Almereyda's), and of late he's become quite a dull studio director - though at least Thor had some humour in the middle. I think ultimately Cinderella does the job of being a mildly diverting film for children, and maybe that's all Branagh set out to accomplish. But for me, that's just not good enough.
