Cinderella (2021)

Cinderella is a 2021 romantic musical film based on the fairy tale of the same name by Charles Perrault. Written and directed by Kay Cannon, it stars singer Camila Cabello as the title character in her acting debut, alongside Idina Menzel, Minnie Driver, Nicholas Galitzine, Billy Porter, and Pierce Brosnan. It is a jukebox musical, featuring pop and rock hits, in addition to several original songs.

It was released in select theaters and digitally on Amazon Prime Video on September 3, 2021.

Plot
Cinderella is an ambitious young woman who wants to establish her shop "Dresses by Ella" one day in her patriarchal society. She catches the eye of Prince Robert in the guard-changing ceremony. The next day, the Prince, dressed as a commoner, goes to the market, where he finds Ella trying to sell her dress, and buys it from her. He later invites her to the ball being held two weeks later, with the promise of introducing her to various people from the world to sell her dresses to.

When the day arrives, Ella is getting ready when her stepmother, Vivian, throws ink on her dress and tells her that only her stepsisters, Malvolia and Narissa, can attend as eligible candidates, as Thomas the vegetable merchant has already confirmed his desire for Ella's hand. Ella is sad, but her Fabulous Godmother magically appears and dresses her in a design of Ella's, with glass shoes, and turns mice into footmen and a crate into a carriage. Ella goes to the ball and meets a visiting queen, who offers to take her around the world as a dressmaker for her and asks to meet her the next day in the market square. Later the Prince finds Ella, shows his sister wearing the gown he bought from Ella previously and proposes to Ella. Ella refuses, however, as she wants to start her career. At the stroke of midnight she leaves the hall after throwing her shoe at one of the King's attendants, who tries to catch her.

The next day, Vivian, knowing the truth that her stepdaughter is the mystery princess, tries to convince Ella to marry the Prince. When Ella refuses, Vivian gives her to Thomas. The Prince's mother, Queen Beatrice, helps his father, King Rowan, understand that it will be right to let the Prince marry a commoner. The Prince keeps searching for Ella and finds her running in the forest after she escapes from Thomas. They confess their love to each other and reach the market in time to show her benefactor her designs, who accepts them and asks Ella to travel with her.

The Prince introduces Ella to the King and Queen, and informs them of their decision to travel the world. The Prince knows this will ruin the plan for his future ascension to the throne, but the Queen smiles as the King proudly declares that their daughter, Princess Gwen (who has repeatedly shown an interest and ability in affairs of state), will now be first in line to the throne. Citizens of the kingdom gather to witness the ceremony announcing the Princess' position and that the Prince and Ella are in love.

Why It’s Not a Happily Ever After

 * 1) The story is pretty much a cookie-cutter Cinderella story, only this time with a feminist twist. Granted, this isn't a bad idea, but that still doesn't make the story any less predictable.
 * 2) * The message is also delivered in a rather heavy-handed and unsubtle manner.
 * 3) The film is a jukebox musical with a few original numbers sprinkled in-between, and the songs they chose don't match the story or the expression the scene is trying to convey itself. For example, while the princesses at the ball are expressing their admiration for the Prince, he starts singing "Seven Nation Army", which doesn't fit at all.
 * 4) * The introduction of the ball scene literally throws in multiple musical numbers, one literally right after the other, for absolutely no reason at all.
 * 5) While the acting is okay, Camila Cabello isn't the best as Ella (Cinderella). True, this was her acting debut and in that regard she isn't awful, but her performance comes off as rather awkward, especially when she stutters.
 * 6) *Cabello was likely only chosen to play the lead character for the purpose of making money off the soundtrack itself.
 * 7) One of the few original songs, Million to One, is completely forgettable and instead sounds like a bland Oscar-bait pop song. Not to mention this song is used more than enough times (3), which can get annoying quickly.
 * 8) The comedy in the feature is really weak, sometimes relying on jokes that come off as pretty juvenile.
 * 9) Certain characters, such as the stepsisters and especially the mice, are quite annoying and serve no main purpose to the plot.
 * 10) Despite the film being centered on Ella and the Prince's relationship, they don't have a whole lot of chemistry, but that could be attributed to the aforementioned weak comedy.
 * 11) The special effects and computer animation in general look absolutely atrocious, worse than even a made-for-TV movie. Especially the CGI used on the mice, which is dreadful. There's one scene in particular where one appears with the body of a mouse and the head of James Corden, which is unintentionally creepy, and not to mention the abysmal editing during the scene where this transformation occurs.
 * 12) The set and costumes look really cheap. The sets look worse than some theatre sets since a lot of it is really open for no reason other than so the actors have room to dance and the costumes make it look as if the actors are cosplaying as their characters, but even then, there are cosplayers with more convincing costumes.
 * 13) The dialogue is absolutely terrible for the most part, especially since some of it is only thrown in as a lazily half-hearted attempt at being hip with the kids.
 * 14) * Take this line for example, "She cray". It seems that the context of this line is practically non-existent.
 * 15) Although none of the characters are unlikable, the problem with them is that they're all completely bland, to the point where it wouldn't take long for them to be forgotten.
 * 16) The cinematography is surprisingly lackluster.
 * 17) The movie presumably takes place in a multiracial 19th century France (similar to the 1997 Brandy version), but the signs in the village are in languages like Italian, Spanish, English and even Chinese, which makes it very confusing as to where in the world it's supposed to be.
 * 18) *To add to the confusion, at the ball there's princesses from around the world, similar to Disney's 2015 version, including an African (from Africa) princess, an Indian princess, supposedly a Japanese princess named "Naomi", a Thai princess, and Tatiana, a black Slavic queen. In the 2015 version, a similar thing was done, but that one actually made sense and had a clear explanation. This one does not.
 * 19) Ella's ballgown doesn't look great. The skirt has these weird "tucks" at both sides (as if trying to imitate those 18th century gowns with the square shaped skirt), and the foreign princesses at the ball have gowns that look so much better than Ella's (some examples include a black bald princess with a black gown, the Thai princess wears a multicolored gown, the Indian princess wears a pink sari, and a blonde with a fuchsia and yellow dress).
 * 20) Overuse of auto-tune.
 * 21) Bad direction by Kay Cannon.

Redeeming Qualities

 * 1) Nicholas Galitzine, Idina Menzel and Billy Porter give fantastic performances as the Prince, the stepmother and Fab G.
 * 2) * On the topic of Fab G, the idea of Cinderella having a genderless fairy godparent is pretty clever.
 * 3) Despite not fitting the tone, the renditions of the songs are still pretty solid.
 * 4) There's a decent self-aware moment where Rowan starts to sing his apology to Queen Beatrice, to her dismay, which was most likely a reference to Pierce Brosnan's weak singing in the Mamma Mia movies.
 * 5) The original songs written for the movie (barring Million to One) such as Dream Girl and the announcements from the Doc Brown crier are pretty solid.
 * 6) The costume designs, particularly for both Ella and Fab G, are spectacular, though it does look pretty cheap.
 * 7) Decent morals.

Reception
Cinderella received mixed-to-negative reviews from critics, who praised the performances of the cast (especially Cabello, Menzel, and Porter), visuals and the soundtrack, but criticized the screenplay, execution, Cannon's musical reimagining, and tone. On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 43% based on 86 reviews, with an average rating of 5/10. The website's critics consensus reads, "This singalong-worthy Cinderella sprinkles some modern fairy dust on the oft-told tale, but flat performances and clunky dialogue make watching often feel like a chore." On Metacritic, it has a weighted average score of 43 out of 100 based on 28 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". However, it was heavily panned by audiences alike. On Letterboxd and IMDb, it has 1.6/5 and 4.2/10 score.

Audience viewership
According to Samba TV, the film was watched in 1.1 million U.S. households over its four-day Labor Day weekend debut. According to the analytics company Screen Engine, Cinderella was the most-watched streaming movie over that weekend, as well as the most-watched movie musical yet in 2021.

Trivia

 * Oddly, despite being announced by Columbia Pictures, the film does not have the Columbia Pictures opening and closing logos.

Videos
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