There is as much talent off-screen as on here, although too often it is squeezed into a formula. The director, Craig Gillespie, brings the crispness and taste for dark wit that he displayed in I, Tonya, especially when Cruella, Horace and Jasper stage a caper to steal a necklace she lost as a girl. But much of the action is clichéd, such as a long tracking shot through the Liberty London store.
The screenplay, by Dana Fox (Isn’t It Romantic) and Tony McNamara (The Favourite), has just enough sharp lines – Cruella blithely says, “Must dash. Much to avenge, revenge and destroy” – to make you wonder if an edgy script was watered down, or a tame one goosed-up. Even the score, by the great Nicholas Britell (Succession, Moonlight) is overshadowed by the soundtrack’s pop songs, some as lively as Blondie’s One Way or Another, others as predictable as the Rolling Stones’ Sympathy for the Devil.
Beavan’s costumes are dazzling throughout, including Cruella’s glittering red dress at the Baroness’s gala. But when the costumes overwhelm the characters and story, there’s something hollow at the film’s centre.
Maybe half-heartedness is the best we can expect from villain origin stories, which always want their characters to be good and bad, having things both ways. In Birds of Prey, Harley Quinn tells a child: “For what it’s worth, you made me want to be a less terrible person.” That might be the motto for the entire genre, and that’s where Cruella leaves us, with a lukewarm villain who regrets being mean to her friends and has not so much as sneered at a dog. Not yet.
★★★☆☆
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