Cinderella – Yet Another Baffling Modern Adaptation

Everything this reviewer heard of this film leads to the same pressing question: “Why?” What is the purpose behind yet another Cinderella, why was it greenlit in the first place, especially with that leading star in the title role (more on that later)? This is merely one of those films whose existence is just baffling, and that’s without getting into the actual film itself! It has every modern wannabe hip pop-bastardizing trend thrown into the mix, in a story that neither needed nor call for this sort of treatment!

This 2021 update of Cinderella more-or-less follows the most well-known iteration of this story; Cinderella is abused by her stepmother and her daughters following the death of her father. She eventually decides to attend the guard-changing ceremony and win the affections of the Prince, aided by her fairy godmother. Despite the best efforts of her stepmother and stepsisters, she ends up finding true love. This version reimagines her as an aspiring dress-designer named Ella (Cabello), her stepmother Vivian (Menzel) is a woman who used to play piano and the film itself is turned into a jukebox musical full of renditions of several modern pop hits as well as some original songs.

Cinderella got off to a bad start right away as it opened with a tongue-in-cheek narration by the Fabulous Godmother (Porter) followed by a bad rendition of “Rhythm Nation” which served as the perfect tone-setter for the remainder of the film. Even though it was written and directed by a woman in Kay Cannon, the film felt more like the brainchild of a man (James Corden), where winking at the camera is supposed to mean “LAUGH OUT LOUD FUNNY” but it doesn’t work. Meanwhile, there isn’t an ounce of wit to its miserable attempts at modern humor, resulting in something coming off as flat and awkward. It wants to utilize the jukebox sensibilities of Moulin Rouge! but doesn’t have an ounce of its bold audacity and ends up feeling like an even more flaccid version of Pan in some ways. It also wants to evoke Bridgerton but wasn’t truly willing to commit to that either. In fact, it’s not really willing to commit to anything.

Not helping its case are many of its performances. For some reason, the filmmakers behind Cinderella decided to invest in Cabello crossing over into movie stardom but the film only highlights her lack of charisma, presence or singing talent. Remaining firmly in the cheekiness lane, that audience can’t help but check out and when she “sings”, that feeling gets significantly worse. And one would also be remised not to mention that the atrocious sound mixing as the film features some of the most poorly-recorded songs in recent memory. They sounds like they were recorded through a tin can in a cold garage! Beyond that, Galitzine as Prince Robert comes off like a British ersatz-Shawn Mendes, and Pierce Brosnan and Minnie Driver are shamefully wasted as King Rowan and Queen Beatrice respectively. Porter as the Fabulous Godmother is essentially doing Billy Porter, and he’s been in better form, and the less said about Corden’s presence the better. Menzel fares the best as Vivian, and does get to sing “Dream Girl”, which she co-wrote, and it’s probably the highlight of the film, but this material as a whole is otherwise so beneath her talents.

In the end, Cinderella is destined to be the film that most will surely reference when they complain about remakes and why there’s no originality in Hollywood anymore. Viewers will be better served skipping this and sticking with the 1950 and 2015 versions.

still courtesy of Amazon Studios

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Gabe Guarin

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