Cruella Review: 5 Ups & 5 Downs

Downs...

5. It's WAY Too Long

First and foremost, Cruella is a film sorely in need of a few more passes in the editing room - it clocks in at a beefy 134 minutes, a runtime it doesn't nearly begin to earn.

From its overbaked prologue sequence onward, the film is packed with indulgent, prolonged sequences which, while often slick and well-crafted, quickly become repetitive as Cruella (Stone) continually attempts to one-up the object of her ire, fashion designer Baroness von Hellman (Emma Thompson).

A skilled editor could've easily trimmed 30 minutes from this without affecting the overall narrative throughline, and while executive meddling is rarely a good thing, in this case Gillespie was seemingly given too much free rein to craft an undisciplined, bloated story.