Cruella

 

Aussie director Craig Gillespie (I, Tonya; Lars and the Real Girl) takes the villainess from Disney's One Hundred and One Dalmatians (1961) and turns her into the mad and misbegotten title-heroine of Cruella, and uses a vaultful of cinematic feats and flights of fantasy in doing so.

This high-dollar / high-concept battle of the Emmas (Stone as the ambitious Estella and her devilish alter-ego Cruella and Thompson as the wicked Baroness) is set in the world of haute couture of London in the '60s and '70's. The picture follows Estella/Cruella as she fights to be noticed by the celebrated Baroness but discovers, as it were, the empress was naked.

Cruella is tuneful (huge soundtrack but is not a musical), campy and energetic. And, as one might expect from Disney Studios, the movie contains a bounty of elaborate set pieces, each more daring than the one before. The script contains many clever passages and is well-served by a cast of pros -- Mark Strong as The Baroness's Valet, Joel Fry and Paul Walter Hauser as Estella's grifting mates. But, Cruella, though often delightful, is longwinded, clocking in at two-and-a-quarter hours.