Cruella

The most telling credit on Craig Gillespie’s film passes quickly. Glenn Close, who played this character in two live action films in 1996 and 2000, is listed here as executive producer, and she coached Emma Stone directly on posture and movement during the shoot. Stone holds the same credit. Costume is the real engine. Jenny Beavan won the Academy Award for this work and Stone moves through forty seven separate looks. Divided into one hundred and thirty four minutes that is a change roughly every three minutes, and the narrative halts at each: a staircase descent, a party arrival, an unveiling. Anyone waiting for plot momentum feels every single pause. A second warning matters more. The film declines to engage with the fur that defines this character in the cartoon. Estella harms no dogs, and the dalmatians function as plot machinery rather than as victims. What you are watching is the origin of a fashion designer, not the origin of a dog skinner. Arriving mid pandemic, it opened the same day in cinemas and behind a paywall on the studio’s own service. Who it’s for: anyone content to have forty seven separate looks halt the story every three minutes. Who it’s not for: viewers hunting the cartoon’s fur plot, left deliberately untouched.