Cruella Review: 5 Ups & 5 Downs
2. The Messy, Lazy Storytelling
Without going into too much detail, this thing is a mess as an attempt at telling a coherent and dramatically compelling origin story for Cruella.
The script is so desperate to wrap itself up in narrative sleights of hand and devious plot twists, but most of the film's big reveals end up feeling like totally stock Disney melodrama.
Otherwise they're fundamentally silly and the rob the film of any earnest attempt to make Cruella a statuesque anti-hero in her own right. By the time Gillespie fully reveals his hand at film's end, it's more-or-less devolved into stakes-free schlock.
Though most Disney movies do adhere to a template, here the formula is put to shockingly transparent use while not even having the good sense to do it in a concise, to-the-point way.