Kenneth Branagh’s Cinderella — that’s an authorship you never thought you’d hear, eh? — poses a fundamental question: Will today’s audiences, raised on Shrek and Enchanted and Tangled and, most recently, Into the Woods, respond to a straightforward rendering of a vintage fairy tale?
Because this version of ‘Ella is nothing if not straightforward. It’s inescapably square, you could say, so unashamedly earnest in its ad-nauseam retread that there are times you might want to stifle your laughter: Musical scores this syrupy and mawkish, voice-over narration this laden with gravitas, deathbed conversations this pretty and soft-focused beg for the subversive eye of a self-aware parodist to see through them.
But, alas, there’s nothing cynical or revisionist or the least bit witty in Branagh and screenwriter Chris Weitz’s pedestrian, Disney-funded translation of the Perrault fairy tale. “Once upon a time” is “once upon a time;” “happily ever after” is “happily ever after.” The only self-referentiality is product placement: More than once, I swear, Haris Zambarloukos’s CGI-teeming cinematography seems deliberately poised to recreate the Disney Studios logo, with fireworks soaring above a castle and angled just so.
This is all designed, I suppose, to re-instill a sense of innocent, moral optimism in our young ones. But its updating of the 1950 animated film is so slavish and rigid —and so driven by SFX that it’s practically a cartoon itself — that it comes off merely as a superfluous cash machine for its studio. Disney might as well have reissued the original. In 3D.
A fine cast, with one exception all lily-white Caucasians, perform their archetypes with the requisite broadness, with Cate Blanchett oozing sociopathic menace as the Evil Stepmother, Stellan Skarsgard performing a yeoman’s duty as the Grand Duke, and Holliday Grainger and Sophie McShera channeling obnoxious privilege as Anastasia and Drizella. Helena Bonham Carter does her thing as the Fairy Godmother, and as the title character and Prince Charming, Lily James and Richard Madden are cute enough for the next Abercrombie ad.
Given Branagh’s track record, I suppose his overly literal approach to this material is not surprising: This is the guy that wouldn’t even cut a line from Hamlet, which has been adapted better and more freely before and since his 242-minute sleeping pill from 1996. Weitz’s dialogue is the more grievous disappointment, because he gives nobody older than 10 anything to appreciate.
When the Fairy Godmother works her magic the night of the Ball and transforms a goose into a coachman, the bird’s first line, when finally granted the power of speech, is “I can’t drive. I’m a goose.” Rest assured that if Pixar were to handle this material, its writers would have concocted something other than this placeholder dialogue, but that’s the level of humor — bland and uninspired — that runs through Cinderella. Not everybody can be Sondheim and Lapine, but would that this movie’s entire palette of humor contain even a thimbleful of the wit that runs in the single line, “I was raised to be charming, not sincere,” from Into the Woods.
Rest assured that everybody’s sincere, and there are no messy shades of gray in these characters’ motivations, just virginal whites and evil blacks. Your kids will love it, I guess — at this week’s press screening, filled with chattering children, the theater erupted in a round of applause at the film’s inevitable resolution — but adults might just have to sit this one out, at least mentally.
If it’s any consolation, it’s worth showing up early to Cinderella for the pre-movie short, Frozen Fever, a mini-sequel to Disney’s (justifiably) worldwide smash, which finds Elsa battling a cold while scrambling to prepare an elaborate birthday party for Anna. It’s pretty much seven minutes in heaven, offering more to enjoy than Cinderella’s 112 minutes of going through the motions.
CINDERELLA. Director: Kenneth Branagh; Cast: Lily James, Richard Madden, Cate Blanchett, Helena Bonham Carter, Stellan Skarsgard; Distributor: Disney; Rating: PG; Opens: Friday at most theaters