'Frozen Fever' (2015)
Director: Chris Buck, Jennifer Lee
Story: Chris Buck, Jennifer Lee, Mark E. Smith
Perhaps the most anticipated Disney short of the 21st century, this seemingly inconsequential addition to the extremely well-legged "Classic" (besides Kristoff letting slip his love for Anna) concerns Anna's birthday celebration and Elsa having a cold which manages to magically create miniature snowmen every time she sneezes. These are eventually taken under the wind of Olaf, who gets to have some of Anna's ice cream birthday cake. Despite the animation not seeming quite as well done as the premiere feature seemed (maybe a 3D viewing would have proved beneficial) and the vaguely depressing notion that Olaf's overhanging snow cloud that keeps him from melting is essentially life-support machine, this is a charmingly illustrated product.
'Cinderella' (2015)
Director: Kenneth Branagh
Writer: Chris Weitz (based on Disney's Cinderella properties and the fairy tale by Charles Perrault)
*Possible spoilers*
"Product" being the word that is easy to label this new instalment in Disney's cash-in phase - not only does it credit the source being Charles Perrault's fairy tale but also the 1949 film's "properties". Wow. Having seemingly done with the run of straight-to-video sequels, the company now visits their Vault with a new method to making money off of the more sacred entries in their animated canon and anyone disappointed by the revisionism of Maleficent (2014) can understandably approach this remake with low expectations. This time though, the reinventing route of screenwriter Linda Wolverton (Maleficent and 2010's Alice In Wonderland) is put aside in favour of a much more straight-up re-enactment, courtesy of Chris Weitz (and unlike 2007's fantasy flop The Golden Compass, this actually retains the source material's ending). Here, it is neither a sequel (Alice In Wonderland), nor a revision (Maleficent) but something more akin to a Shakespeare play being performed by the same company via pantomime (and it doesn't get much more pantomime than new fairy godmother Helena Bonham Carter).
The remake largely discarding the original's songs, relegating "Bippity Boppity Boo" (performed by Bonham Carter) and "A Dream Is A Wish Your Heart Makes" (Lily James) to the end credits, much in the manner of "Once Upon a Dream" in Maleficent (after all, Disney does have a soundtrack album to sell). It also tones down the anthropomorphism of the mice, reducing their sped-up voices to incoherent babbling and taking away their clothes. The digital work on the mice isn't perfect but it's better than whatever was done to depict Bonham Carter's fairy godmother as a decrepit (it's AWFUL). Gone also are the Tom & Jerry antics between the mice and pet cat Lucifer. What we do have is more of a backstory (given in the original as narrated exposition) in which we meet Cinderella's parents prior to her mother's U-rated illness and death. The creation of Cinderella's original dress (aided by the mice) is now reduced to being part of a montage and the motivation behind it's humiliating tearing is now snobbery rather than because the step sisters recognised elements of their own property being seemingly misappropriated.
The love story is also much closer to the "meeting of two people in the right circumstances" that was digged at in the original, sixty-four years before Frozen (2013) questioned the marital pairing of people who had only met that night. Here, our heroine meets her future bae after she runs away from home on a real-life horse and he is out hunting a poorly-rendered stag. They circle each other on horseback and it's quite obvious she desires congress.
As a singular self-contained entity, it is quite an efficient entertainment with beautiful scenery (a glimpse of what the inevitable live-action Frozen might look like) and an extremely well-detailed palace. It's a grottier portrayal of the time and place than the original, but not quite as darkly designed as the Cinderella segments of Disney's recent musical fairy tale assembling Into The Woods (2014). The morbid humour in that film cannot be found here - the step-sisters don't hack off parts of their feet in order to make the glass slipper fit and neither are they blinded by birds. Also, in this remake, the sisters are "fairer" on the outside than perhaps usually expected of an adaptation while their "ugliness" is internal. The stepmother is now re-MILFed by Cate Blanchett who - in an interesting tinkering with the third act - tries to use Cinderella's one slipper as a key to gaining power in the kingdom.
The film also takes advantage of the physically three-dimensional characters by making them more human than their hand-drawn predecessors. Lily James's (Fast Girls, 2012) Cinderella breaking down (breaking some crockery in the process) elicits genuine sympathy while the stepmother is allowed a tear for the passing of her husband - although whether it's from grief or from fear of financial ruin is unclear. The stepfamily's poverty is a key point and they are permitted redemption at the end - the sisters seemingly repent while the mother is shown grace.
Digital mice aside (and Bonham Carter's appearance may be sniffed by some as stock casting), it's a fine companion piece and essentially enjoyable by itself (it might have been fruitful to filter out the original's references). 2017's Beauty And The Beast will have some of its own original's fans to convince though.
No comments:
Post a Comment