My Review of "Cruella"

Cruella is the live action movie about the villain of 101 Dalmatians. I wasn't too sure if I wanted to watch this movie because I wasn't a huge fan of the 101 Dalmatians cartoon. It wasn't my cup of tea but a friend of mine said that I had to give it a try. They said that the movie had great art direction and that I'd be surprised. That my friend sounds like a challenge that I'm willing to take.

The movie starts off with the very young Cruella. In her younger days she was known as Estella. Apparently from a young age she had some sort of duality to her personality. I guess they're going to play up the juxtaposition of black and white throughout the movie to throw back to the Dalmatians. Even Estella's natural hair color is black and white.

She is raised by a loving mother that is having a bit of a hard time because of Estella's bi-polar personality. This type of personality doesn't mix well with school especially in the 60's or 70's. I'm not entirely sure what time period this movie takes place in but I don't think they were giving kids with mental illnesses a fair shake.

Once Estella finally gets kicked out of school her mother decides that the two of them could move to London to make a new life for themselves. In order to do this the mother needs to go to a friend to ask for some help. When she goes to seek help a series of crazy things happen that results with the mother dying.

Stricken with grief and guilt Estella ventures off by herself to London and makes a living with some local street kids. That's basically when the adventure really sets off.

This movie is so much fun from start to finish. I couldn't really take too much of a breath because there'd always be something big that would be about to happen. The pacing of this was so well done where I'm not exhausted with so much happening but I wasn't ever bored either.

When my friend told me that the art direction of the show was amazing I didn't believe it until I saw the movie. A lot of the movie surrounds the artistic eye of Estella and her competition. Estella has been a brilliant artist from the first scene in which we see her and we continue to see her art flourish.

The visual art is also well complimented with the music selection. They really picked a lot of the music of the era that would perfectly fit the mood of each of the scenes. Each song was carefully picked in order to bring up or down the momentum of the movie and really helped set the pace.

For the fans of 101 Dalmatians there are a lot of Easter eggs in this movie and references that will keep you happy. Even though I'm not a huge fan of the 101 Dalmatians movie I was able to spot a lot of the mentions and nods. It would probably be equivalent to the Rogue One movie to Star Wars: A New Hope.

Each of the actors of the movie really made the movie come to life. Due to the fact that all of these characters are based on cartoons you wouldn't expect the live actors to do the characters justice. That's not the case with this movie. I don't know how they did it but they were over the top but yet not too cartoony that we'd be taken out of the movie. There have been times when actors go a little too wacky for us to take the movie seriously. This movie is just at the right spot that we can take it seriously and still feel the cartoon element of the characters. It's almost as if cartoon and live action had been blurred.

Overall, I really had a great time watching this movie. I loved the fact that I didn't know too much and had a certain expectation for this movie. When I saw it all my expectations were thrown and I was pleasantly surprised that I was able to have so much fun with it. I have to give this movie an 8 out of 10. I think a lot of people are going to enjoy this movie whether they're young or old. This is definitely a movie that I will be recommending to all of my friends.