Cinderella (2021)

Cinderella (2021)

 

2/10

Starring

Camila Cabello

Idina Menzel

Minnie Driver

Nicholas Galitzine

Billy Porter

Pierce Brosnan

 

Directed by Kay Cannon

 

This Amazon Prime musical comedy starred Camila Cabello as Cinderella. We kick off with a very nice musical number of Rhythm Nation (Janet Jackson) and You Gotta Be (Des'ree), merged together ever so nicely. As you would expect, Cabello did some solid singing, for which I have no reason to complain. After that, everything that follows is bulls#@t.

(This review contains spoilers, which is odd to say because if you don't know the Cinderella story by now, you must have had a weird childhood.)

It takes a lot of energy to get through this movie without pulling your own hair out. The writers' decision to make a woke girl-power/women-liberation movie and base it on a Cinderella plot goes over my head. Who signed off on this trash?

The movie’s women’s message totally steam rolls everything else. This is supposed to be a modernized Cinderella story, but what we get instead is a watered-down girl-power script with no spice.

I don’t recall the Cinderella story ever having space for Cinderella trying to kick off her own business. Well, in this plot, after the regular intro of Cinderella, the wicked stepmother, stepsisters, and the prince, we discover that Cinderella is a dressmaker with a desire to start her own business. It just so happens that in the kingdom she lives in, women are not allowed to own businesses. At this point, I should have stopped watching. But something stupid in me soldiered on.

Then the regular Cinderella things happen, with some changes here and there to make the movie a lot different, but not different enough that you’ll forget this is a Cinderella story. The time for the ball comes, and who do we have? A fairy godmother who is male — correction, a man who wants to be addressed as a woman. We skip through that and get closer to the main magic, the lost shoe. At this point, I notice that the movie is filled with more cameos of British comedians that I’ve come to love after watching British panel shows like Taskmaster, 8 Out of 10 Cats, Would I Lie to You, QI, and Mock the Week.

Even all these cameos meant nothing to lift the mood of the trash I was being fed. The fairy godmother does her magic, and Cinderella gets a dress for the ball, with a magical carriage and everything almost identical to the Disney animated version. She gets to the ball, she and the prince fall in love, and when midnight strikes, she has to run off, leaving him behind with one shoe because, at midnight, all the magic ends. The prince, as you can guess, is heartbroken and needs to find his love.

Now, here’s where the writers messed up again.

The old tale had its plot holes, but this one decided to make the holes so big it could suck in the whole Earth. The prince had met Cinderella twice before their ball meeting. Even the king, in the end, recognized her as having seen her before. But the prince seems to be so dense that he would marry anyone whose foot fits the shoe, even though he already knew who it was he was looking for. At this point, I was like, can we stop the whole shoe-leg hunt and just hunt for the girl? But nope, the writers wanted to stick to this part of the story.

Now, the stupid thing about this is that in the story they’re modifying, the prince never met Cinderella. Knowing that, the shoe hunt (which you’d want to believe is a magical shoe that only fits Cinderella) kinda made sense, all things considered. Here, it made no sense at all.

Then the end has Cinderella and the prince marry and live happily ever after. The king can now rest knowing that the crown can be passed to the prince with a worthy bride at his side. Sike!!! That did not happen. Even that normal ending, they messed it up. I was so shocked that it was possible to mess up the “happily ever after.”

Cinderella and the prince decided not to marry right away; they wanted to spend their time getting to know each other first. What the hell?

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s life was also introduced into this mess of a movie. The couple, who have decided to date, also relinquish their title, and the crown is passed on to the prince’s sister.

Watch at your own risk.