(Yes that title is an actual line from the movie...)
Initially I really didn't want to see this movie. To be honest I'm not a fan of the original 1961 101 Dalmations, despite how much Disney tries to milk it it's just never inspired me like their other movies have so that was strike one against this movie for me. When I then heard that the plot involved a group of rampant Dalmations running Cruella's mother off of a cliff, any mild curiosity I might have had just immediately vanished. Isn't it enough for a character to be a bitch just to be a bitch?
Not every character needs to be driven by a traumatic past event and pathologized to the 9th degree. Some people are just shitty, and it's incredibly demeaning to people with actual traumatic experiences that they're trying to recover from when it's become such the default plot line for villainous characters to go off of. Although like I said I've never been a fan of 101 Dalmatians, I'm pretty sure Cruella is supposed to simply represent the bourgeoisie and class divide? Anita and Roger live together in a tiny home, and I'm not going to pretend they're poor because they live in one of the most expensive areas of London and hire a Nanny ffs, but they certainly work for a living and live a vastly different lifestyle to the opulent Cruella. Cruella is simply a spoilt rich woman who no one has ever said no to until Roger and Anita have the audacity to do just that and then she GOES OFF. She's just acting out and throwing a tantrum like rich people do when they can't get their own way, and naturally lacks empathy because she's never had to show any because she sees everyone else as below her and worthless. It's class war, not trauma that motivates her so stop trying to pathologize her!
If you read my blog you know I loved Joker (2019), but the criticism of this becoming the new trend for villain backstories is so completely valid, and I didn't want to see this movie because Disney are so fricking lazy that they can't even come up with their own original plots for their over recycled characters anymore. And it makes me mad because there are actually some Disney villains that I would love to see properly explored in a stand alone film, or I would of loved to have seen a Cruella movie that actually addressed class divide, over accumulation of wealth, and the exploitations of the fashion industry. But no, we get Dalmatians running a woman off a cliff and a pathetic revenge story. Nice.
So this was the mindset I went into the film with, and I know you're probably wondering why I even bothered at this point but I've seen people raving about this movie, and I did buy into the negative hype surrounding Joker before I saw it and it became my favourite movie so I figured I'd give it a go and see if I was to be proved wrong again. And honestly? My judgements were completely right.
I have so many thoughts with this movie and just how bad it was that I'm not even quite sure how to start and put all of my notes into some kind of coherent order. I'm not usually the type to make notes while I'm watching a movie, but it was literally annoying me that badly that I had to vent my frustrations out as they were happening.
➳ I guess first up I should just say that this movie is so not my brand of humor, which is probably where a lot of my issues lie with it. It tries very hard to be tongue in cheek and wink at the camera to show us how self aware it is, but it's just annoying. I don't need to know that Cruella picked her surname because of a car, that she gifts Roger and Anita their dogs, and it was just forcing itself far too hard to try and connect itself to it's source material in the most irrelevant of ways that added nothing to the plot. The reality is heightened to the point of just feeling incredibly cheesy and overly exaggerated that it ends up so that there's absolutely nothing to connect with or any kind of emotional pull to any of it. I found it all a bit embarrassing to watch honestly.
➳ It's also like they took the "girl boss" trend and just absolutely ran with it to the point that it almost felt like a parody except I don't think that's what they were aiming for. Is it supposed to be empowering? I can't even tell anymore because the tone of the movie was just all over the place.
➳ When you have to resort to a voiceover for the majority of the movie, that's some weak ass storytelling. A well developed plot doesn't need the characters motives to be spelt out to the audience, yet that's exactly the narrative device this movie falls back on repeatedly.
➳ I saw a lot of press that this movie was to feature "Disney's first openly LGBT character!!" But didn't we already have this...? Am I being actively gaslit by Disney now, what the hell is going on...? But more to the point, it wasn't. I'm making the assumption that they're referring to the character of Artie, who is a complete stereotype of a camp, effeminate man, but there's nothing actually said or done that makes him gay. It's just yet another case of queerbaiting with no actual follow through.
Yes he's queer coded in the most stereotypical of ways, but that's not the same thing as being openly gay. Particularly when this movie is set in the 1970s, a time when fashion was blurring the lines of binary gender and glam rock was at it's peak so men wearing make up, ruffled blouses, and platform shoes was nothing out of the norm regardless. But glam rock movement was a lot more heteronormative than it looks through a modern lens - a lot of straight men dressed like Marc Bolan, and it was still an incredibly dangerous time to be queer. And it’s misleading not only because gender and sexuality are two different things, but this movie is about the fashion industry where it would be expected for Artie to be at the forefront of trends, which works in the opposite of making him "openly gay" and instead just adds to his ambiguity. And any room for ambiguity is not representation! Queer audiences deserve to see themselves depicted fully and diversely onscreen instead of constantly given false promises that the movie never lives up to.
And kind of nit-picky, but things that bothered me even so:
➳ The 1960s/70s soundtrack was not only so painfully predictable, but having a needle drop every 5 seconds like so much else about this movie was just incredibly annoying. Taking Iggy Pop's "I Wanna Be Your Dog" lyrics at face value doesn't add nuance, it just feels childish.
➳ Jasper and Horace are the most well spoken homeless kids with RP accents I've ever heard.
➳ Those CGI dogs!! Just horrible!
➳ The Baroness was more Cruella De Vil than Cruella.
TLDR - I hated it.