Review: "Cruella"

“Cruella” is not the movie I was expecting them to make.

I’ve wavered on Disney’s recent obsession with turning its iconic animated titles into live action films. “Cinderella” was perfectly wonderful, “Dumbo” was a horrid embarrassment, and most of the rest have been somewhere in the middle like “The Lion King” -- technically accomplished but artistically unnecessary.

So for “101 Dalmatians,” I was expecting them to crank out another iteration of the live-action version featuring Glenn Close 25 years ago, putting iconic villainess Cruella de Vil in the driver’s seat in a family-friendly romp. Emma Stone seemed a strange casting choice, as Cruella is definitively a well-etched harridan, and Stone is barely past the ingénue stage.

“Cruella” is deeper, darker and more ambitious than I could’ve hoped. I should have expected nothing less from director Craig Gillespie, known for odd and offbeat fare like “Lars and the Real Girl” and “I, Tonya.”

It’s rated PG-13 and is an edgy origin story in which Dalmatians barely show up -- and only then as furry antagonists. That’s right, Cruella is recast as a misunderstood antiheroine who’s not trying to turn spotted puppies into a fur coat but is someone who’s been victimized and traumatized and learns to lash out.

It’s also an exquisitely striking movie filled with vibrant colors and fabulous clothes. You can already go ahead and bank on costume designer Jenny Beavan getting an Oscar nomination for all the fabulous, ostentatious gowns and get-ups Stone and the rest of the cast get to wear.

I was also impressed with the originality of the backstory (screenplay by Dana Fox and Tony McNamara). Here she is Estella, an orphaned moppet born with shocking black-and-white hair raised by a kindly British mum (Emily Beecham) who instructs her to bury her nastier instincts, even when she’s picked on by prigs at her posh school. (Tipper Seifert-Cleveland plays the role as a child.)

In this version, “Cruella” is the name they come up with for her evil-leaning alter ego. But Estella learns to push down these characteristics, both figuratively and literally, dying her bi-color hair red and hiding behind owlish glasses. After her mother’s shocking death, she grows up as a petty thief with fellow orphans Jasper and Horace (Joel Fry and Paul Walter Hauser), though she aspires to be a fashion designer.

She gets a job at the snooty Liberty of London store but is consigned to cleaning lady. A drunken sabotage of a display window lands her a position with the Baroness (Emma Thompson), the queen of Brit fashion, who takes her under her wing and teaches Estella the finer points of being a sneering, hateful overlord.

The Emmas, Stone and Thompson, are a delicious pairing, a battle of haughty English accents and upturned noses. The comparison to Anne Hathaway and Meryl Streep in “The Devil Wears Prada” seems obvious, and welcome. Though in this case, Estella looks upon her tormentor as someone to be emulated and defeated rather than serve as cautionary tale.

Estella revives her Cruella persona as the public challenger to the Baroness’ tight grip on the fashion world, using her criminal team -- the two boys plus two little dogs, including one in an eye patch -- to pull off a series of attention-grabbing stunts that double as crimes and put-downs. With a story set in the 1970s, there’s a bittersweet feminism subtext at play about extraordinary women who must command fear because they aren’t allowed to earn respect.

“Aren’t they gorgeous and vicious? It’s my favorite combination,” Baroness says of her trio of guard Dalmatians.

John McCrea turns up as Artie, a gender-fluid vintage clothing store owner who becomes a friend and ally; Mark Strong as John, the Baroness’ right-hand man and the only person allowed to talk back to her; Andrew Leung as a more toadying flunky, perpetually astonished or horrified; and Kirby Howell-Baptiste as a childhood friend turned fashion journalist.

Rather than fall back on formula, “Cruella” uses its animated and live action predecessors as a mere launch pad for something different and -- dare I say about a remake of an old cartoon? -- dazzlingly original.

  

Review: "A Dog's Purpose"

“A Dog’s Purpose” is an unrepentant tearjerker, as movies about dogs often are.

There’s just an indescribable purity about a dog. Treat it well, and it will return that to you in the form of boundless love. A dog will wait hours in your office while you do stuff they consider dreadfully boring (like writing a movie review), hoping for a chance at five minutes of playtime.

They may not be great for the pocketbook -- how much for flea medicine again?? -- but when it comes to spiritual replenishment, the ROI on dogs cannot be beaten.

Director Lasse Hallström, who made the seminal “My Life As a Dog” 30-odd years ago, gives us a fanciful tale of a super canine, a red retriever named Bailey who lives out several lives during the course of the movie, always being resurrected as a puppy with a new chance at finding its reason for existing.

Josh Gad, with that incredibly flexible voice of his, narrates Bailey as he morphs into Ellie, a German Shepherd police dog, a Corgi named Tito with a tremendous appetite, and a big hound named Buddy. He retains his memories as Bailey, and strives to do good by the humans in his life, despite some of them not being very caring owners.

The strongest relationship is with Ethan, a boy growing up in the 1950s and ‘60s. He’s played by Bryce Gheisar as a kid and K.J. Apa as a teen. They’re inseparable buds, even when Ethan becomes the star quarterback on the high school football team and starts dating Hannah (Britt Robertson), who’s clearly The One.

But dark stuff in Ethan’s family and circumstances push things in a darker direction, with Bailey trying to make sense of it all from his perspective underneath the kitchen table. In his simplistic paradigm where sniffing, eating, playing and licking are the sum total secrets to happiness, humans are a tremendous conundrum.

Let’s talk about controversy. Or rather, nontroversy. There’s a video floating around of one of the dog actors for the film being pushed into water by its trainer during production. It got scared but was not hurt or ever in any danger. Some activist types are pushing a boycott of the movie as a result. Please. People who call that animal abuse have obviously never seen real animal abuse. I did worse than that to my pooch last weekend when she stole a piece of pizza.

It does appear to have had an effect, which it is my duty to report. For starters, the movie is a lot shorter than the 120-minute running time that’s been published. It appears something like 20 minutes have been hastily cut out. The credits also list a bunch more people as screenwriters besides Cathryn Michon, who adapted the novel by W. Bruce Cameron. And the Hollywood premier was scrapped.

OK? Got all that? Let’s get back to reviewing the movie.

This is not an especially clever or sophisticated film. Dogs do things to make us happy, dogs do things to make us sad. Life (or rather, lives) unfold with the requisite mix of joy, betrayal, tragedy and pathos.

I’m not giving anything away in saying that the story eventually returns to Ethan and Hannah, a half-century later, now played by Dennis Quaid and Peggy Lipton. We know what’s going to happen, the dog knows what’s going to happen, and it’s just a matter of waiting until the people catch up.

But doggarnit, if you don’t shed a few tears and crack a few smiles during “A Dog’s Purpose,” then there’s no hope for you.