Well, Cruella (2021) was much more enjoyable than I expected, and I’m glad I had the opportunity to see it in theaters!
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Transcript
00:00
Shame on me. Shame on me. Why do I pull myself to go see movies when I haven’t seen the films I probably should have seen before I see the movie? And that is the way with Cruella. I’m not saying I did not see the 101 Dalmatians. Well, that’s exactly how it sounded like I said it, but I haven’t seen the 101 Dalmatians since I was a wee one. So for me to really go into this movie, to see all of the probably easter eggs and everything – I didn’t. So if you’re expecting one of those talks, you’re gonna have to move on because this is Movies Are Dumb Sometimes. And today, we’re talking about Disney’s Cruella.
00:52
Now, you know me, I like to talk about some opening shots. And then the opening shot for this movie starts with Cruella being born. And at first I was like, that’s pretty cliche. But I mean, really, is there a better way to start somebody’s life story than when they were being born? A little out of the – what you would have expected from Disney.
01:14
And then it quickly skips ahead about what she was like 10, 11, 12…and she’s in school. So her mom has given her the name Estella. But she has that Cruella side.
01:25
So Cruella when she is in, I guess they would call it Primary School over there and good ol England. She is not getting into – she’s not making a lot of friends let’s just say. She’s she’s fighting back. That’s the big thing. And I would have thought it would have been a bigger deal because she is a girl and it’s the 60s and she’s really fighting back like, hard. She’s not just pinching the boy back. She is fighting.
01:51
And there’s a scene where her mom is called in because the headmaster and her butt heads. Well, they’re not butting heads, he’s just disciplining her. And there’s a conversation between mom, Cruella, and the headmaster. And wow, I don’t know if the camera whip pans and the cuts and everything was all necessary for this. The editing and the camera movements made this seem like an extremely jarring scene, and I felt like it was uncalled for Disney. But that’s not how I would have shot it, I guess. So I don’t know.
02:25
Can you mean – you know, that’s the whole thing about Movies Are Dumb Sometimes. Can they really ever be dumb? Are they just different? Maybe he should just call this movies are different sometimes. But Gosh, darn it. Oh, well, moving on.
02:44
See now, I’m gonna admit, maybe I’m dumb sometimes, because in the beginning in the movie, Corella and her mom have to start by a house, which you find out later, is the Baronesses house and there’s a whole shindig going down there. I’ll let you discover that on your own.
03:01
But the dogs are going to attack Cruella, because she broke into the party where she wasn’t supposed to be. And then the dogs just jumped over krewella and attacked the mom and knocked the mom over the cliff and killed the mom. I wrote down, I literally wrote down “Why did dogs attack her mom?” Like it didn’t make any sense. It just hit like, you’re watching like, this makes no sense at all. And then later in the movie, you find out why. So that’s sometimes makes me dumb.
03:32
But one thing I don’t understand, and you see this in movies, a lot – a lot. So Horace, one of the you know, Horace and Jasper, Cruella’s little gang members, which they’re introduced here, and they stay together forever I guess.
03:48
Horace is pit pop – pickpocketing, people. And you see it in movies all the time. And maybe I’m just hyper aware. I’m not sure. But people are getting picked party pocket in in movies so much. And it looks so easy. A lot of the time. I would imagine one of the big things about this – probably two big things about pickpocket sleight of hand and distraction. But a lot of the distraction in this is he just – it’s like, I don’t know, I just see it in movies too much. And it’s like everybody is just so oblivious to everything that’s happening around them. And it’s not like this is something new for me. I’ve always been like this. I don’t know, I grew up in South Dakota. And then I joined the army. So maybe that had something to do with it. And then after I got to the army, I moved to New York. And it my perception of New York because of people and the media and movies and stuff was not very nice. So I was a little hyper vigilant there. And maybe I’ve just kept that for the rest of my life. But pickpocketing in these movies. It just looks so easy. And it’s so hard to believe that it could be that easy if it was that easy. And I’m not saying that there isn’t a lot of skill possibly involved in it. But it literally just looks like you could just go pickpocket anybody anywhere because very rarely do people get caught pickpocketing and movies.
05:17
And this little gang of three over the next 15-10 years, however long it was till they grew up, which by the way, there was a pretty cool transition from young Cruella to adult slash teenage Cruella – they never got more than three people? I don’t know. That’s me.
05:39
I mean, OK, I guess you really can’t add anything. Or you could add I mean, the gang person could leave but apparently then then no big other members of this gang, which is I mean, I can get it. If you keep it small. It’s harder to mess things up. But they took her in pretty easily.
06:00
Now one thing when Corolla gets this job at the Fashion shop, or no, I forget the name of it. But she gets this job. She, she loves that she wants to work there so bad. So Jasper gets her a job there. But she ends up being just the cleaning lady. And she’s at one point hauling around garbage bags. And these garbage bags look like they have nothing in them. There’s nothing in these garbage bags. And if you watch this in movies, it seems that way a lot. A lot of these bags, a lot of briefcases, suitcases. The actors are acting like they’re heavier, they have some weight to them, but they don’t. And I always wondered why they don’t just add weight to these bags. Would it really throw the I mean, I know the actor’s job is to act. But would it really throw them off to not have to act? I mean, I’ve taken some acting classes, but I’ve never gone into heavy-heavy acting. And I would imagine the maybe the best actors learn the best by acting out every single little thing. But that’s just me thinking!
07:09
And then Cruella ends up in the garbage somehow, and she gets a banana slice on her face, and she doesn’t notice and I was like, Okay. I, I don’t know about you. But if I worked in a place where your appearance was 100% what matters, I’m pretty sure I would notice a banana slice on my face.
07:29
But my question right now. Does Disney promote getting drunk? Because in this movie, Cruella gets hammered with a bottle of whiskey that she stole from her boss. She goes to the front window thing, display because they’re earlier in the movie. She was asking the lady through the window “Oh, do you really think this looks good? This dress – this setup?”
07:56
And fast forward about 10 minutes. She’s in that window display drunk. And she wakes up and everybody’s looking at her. In the Baroness comes and wants know who made that display? Because they’re hired. And there was a good little conversation between the manager of the shop and the Baroness. I mean, I really I kind of enjoyed this scene, but I was surprised to see that Disney went the route of getting drunk can get you a job with the best and is not saying it’s not possible. But it is a little shocking, isn’t it?
08:41
Shortly after Cruella gets hired by the Baroness, she’s just walking down the street. It just cut to a scene of her walking down the street. And she walks into Arte’s shop. Arte, a fashion, uh, underground fashion mogul. No, he’s not a mogul. Underground fashion extraordinaire, I guess you’d call him. Just she just randomly walks in the shop goes Oh, look at this little shop. And I’m like this…I don’t know. I didn’t This is his introduction came out of nowhere. No, like, oh, there’s this new shop. Let’s go check it out. She’s just literally walking down the street. It was raining in this store. It might be dumb for not really liking this, but please tell me if I’m wrong or please tell me if I’m right. Because I’m sure I’m gonna think about this little introduction of already for a little while. And I know I shouldn’t but I don’t know why it’s gonna bother me but it will.
09:32
The main bad guy in this movie is the Baroness. I mean, you could say it’s Cruella cuz she’s a little bipolar. And she’s hard to deal with. And if she just simply picked a path, maybe she wouldn’t have all these problems but the Baroness is the antagonist and she kind of comes off as this evil-evil lady. Fashionaire or what do you say? Fashionista. She’s not a fashionista – she’s a fashion…isa. Okay, never mind.
10:05
She, she comes off as like a tyrant in the fashion world but she really isn’t. And I thought that was a good little like swerve of her character. When her security guard coughed while she was reading her review, I thought he was going to be done, but he wasn’t. Later on in the movie. There was another one of her assistants like messed something up, but she didn’t fire the assistant, as you would think these evil people do so somewhere deep down inside the Baroness, she does have a heart. Well, okay, movies, you’re gonna get your spoilers here. I mean, there was a Stella and Cruella. And you find out eventually that the Baroness is Cruella’s mother. Maybe the Baroness wasn’t as bad as she wanted to be. And I feel like there’s something – there was a moment in her life that had her choose her Cruella side, she did have a good side. But something happened that led her down the dark path. And it’d be interesting to see the Baroness’s story as to why she chose the dark path.
11:18
Let’s back it up a little bit here. So, Horace wants to know what the angle is because Jasper is the one that got Cruella the job at the Fashion shop. And Horace multiple times brings up “What’s the angle? What’s the angle?” Of course, you know, that’s the thing these guys are always working an angle is what these hustlers do.
11:37
And Jasper was like, “There’s no angle. I just wanted her to work where she can be put her good works her good talent to good use.” And oh, that’s another thing. You would think that krewella would have developed more. She’s what’s the word? practical uniforms, instead of just good looking uniforms for her, and her gangs, little heists, like all of she designed all of the uniforms, all of their getups all of their costumes, and none of them really demonstrated practical use. And I think that’s where Cruella really could have taken off. I think I said I saw the 101 Dalmatians when I was super young, but her practical use could have made her really stand out. But instead, she was just a fashion designer.
12:24
She could have upped her game and Disney could have upped her game as a character, and created practical uniforms and costumes, but I didn’t see any practicality out of anything. But anyways, getting back to the angle. So this whole time Horace is like “What’s the angle? What’s the angle? Why is she working there? What’s the angle?” Or “What’s the angle?” Because he was British. “What’s the angle? Jasper? What’s the angle?”
12:51
But Corolla eventually discovers that the Baroness has her necklace, her mom’s necklace that she was going to pass down to her. And that ends up becoming the angle. But me that didn’t make any sense. And it’s – Horace kind of a doofy ball. So he could you know, he would be like, “Oh, that’s the angle. That’s your angle. I knew there was an angle” but can it really be the angle if there was no angle in the beginning and Cruella or Jasper didn’t say hey, you idiot. No. Instead, they kind of went along with it. But I’m like, come on. Cruella is supposed to be like smart, and as a smarty pants, but maybe she was playing to horses dumb side and letting them have victory? I don’t know. Horace probably needed it.
13:35
But it’s I don’t know. I – it’s hard to tell where Creulla, at the end of the movie, where Cruella is going to go with her personality. So well. I mean, we know where she goes. But nevermind. That’s, I don’t we’re gonna have to wait for the next movie to ponder more on that.
13:58
So eventually, Cruella starts upstaging the Baroness and I really enjoyed it, though it was very punk – punk rock. It was very enjoyable to see, Cruella upstage the Baroness. But at one point, during one of the upstagings, Cruella, and Horace and Jasper are running away because the police are coming or some little thing happened and they had to disperse. And Jasper and Horace get caught up. It’s staring at something but they’re standing there while the police are coming in.
14:27
They’re looking at something and the whole thought of escape has just completely left their minds and Cruella ran off. While they were standing there. She went and hijacked a car. Or you know, what is that when they stick the wires underneath?
14:43
She stole a car and she came and picked them up but that had to have taken like a minute or two. So Horace and Jasper are just standing there exposed waiting for the police to come get them while Cruella has gout getting a car in I’m just like “Why?”
14:59
This happens a lot in movies where there’s like this time gap that the movie makers filmmakers don’t see. There’s always like this long piece of time. That is because you’re editing it looks like a short amount of time. So really, it looked like they were there for about five to ten seconds. But in reality about a minute or two has gone by at least. And it just makes the characters look stupid. And I’m not saying the characters weren’t stupid. Horace obviously needs some help. Jasper though, seems to have his head on his shoulders a lot better. But this scene could have been it just made them look really dumb and lucky. And you don’t want your characters to be lucky because that doesn’t build upon the character. Unless the character is just luck. Then I guess you got a thing there.
15:54
Now if you listen to the last episode of Movies Are Dumped Sometimes it was just a rapid fire discussion of Silo, Scoob! and The Unholy, but the dog napping and Scoob! was about 10 billion times harder than the dog napping was in Cruella. In Scoob!, dastardly for a good chunk of the movie is trying to check down scoob and can’t just simply go pick them up and carry him off.
16:21
But in this movie, when they said they were going to kidnap the Baronesses dalmatians, I sat there and I was like, “Oh, this is gonna be tough, but it was – “Hey, her dogs are getting pedicures. All right, let’s just let them run out to the car.” I was like, “Oh, jeez, that was easy.”
16:38
And this movie was already pushing the two and a half hour limit. It was all over two hours long. So I get it. But honestly, this movie was really entertaining and the two hours, two hours 15 minutes or whatever went by super fast. Well, not super fast, but it wasn’t something I was worried about. Sometimes I look at the watch and I’ll be like, “When is this movie gonna end? But not with this movie I didn’t look at my watch once so that I guess there you have it. You should go see this movie. It definitely it doesn’t it doesn’t need the theater. You could watch it at home and enjoy it. But there wasn’t a lot of big theater, big Screen necessary moments in this film.
17:19
And to step back into Cruella and talking about her little punk rock attitude and take over and everything about this whole punk rock part of Cruella was great. I don’t know if that was the old punk rock part of me loving it. Or if it just was I’ve seen a lot of people liking it too.
17:36
However, what is not punk rock about this movie are it’s computer generated graphics CGG. CGI is especially at the end when Corolla jumps off the cliff and lands in the water. I was watching it and when she landed in the water. I was like, oh, man, that looks no good.
17:58
And then when she was on the dump truck, and her dress, er the Baroness is dresses she had tied to the dump truck. It looks so it wouldn’t have happened like that. I didn’t show a fan blowing nothing.
18:13
So don’t say there was a fan under there. And she wouldn’t have thought that far ahead. I don’t believe and would they even had that technology back in the 70s? And that was another thing – was – Emma Stone did good job here. I’m not saying she’s bad did a bad job. But was she age appropriate for this? I felt like she looked much older than what the character she was portraying as. When she was Cruella, she looked like the right age. But when she was Estella, I was like, ah, she doesn’t look 18 or 20. She looks 30.
18:49
And it bugged me a little bit. But it wasn’t a big deal. But that’s a question that I’d like to ask everybody here. Does it bug you when somebody old plays a young character or when somebody young plays an old character? I mean, it doesn’t happen with the ladder that much. But the former definitely, and I’m not saying they should have went out of their way. That’s the – that’s the whole process of movie making, man!
19:15
Where are you going to spend your money? How are you going to think about what choices you make determine whether or not people are going to see this film? How dependable are the people that – is the whole thing, you know? This movie, what probably had $100 million, at least in it? So do you go with somebody you know, and spend the money on you somebody that’s gonna be dependable or not?
19:38
Because that was the thing. She was like 18 she had to be 18 to 20 because it was 1964 when she was in primary school. And then it said in the 70s I don’t remember any date or anything it just said in the 70s. So say 10 years that’ll put it right at ’74. So I don’t know that’s probably just me well Looking for something dumb when I don’t need to be looking for something dumb.
20:08
And there was one moment in this movie where they got a taser. I didn’t know they had tasers back then but the Baroness tased, one of the housekeeper’s in her house, and she screamed, and here’s where I’m dumb sometimes. I was like, I wrote down, “Can you scream when you get tased?”
20:23
Because I remember watching a few tasing videos and people lock up and they usually just fall and then they grunt afterwards. But if you go to the description and go to the blog post page for this, or just go to the description or something, I put a link of the YouTube video of tase fails, and it turns out, you can scream.
20:47
There’s a video of a guy getting tased in a fast food joint, who’s he’s gets tased like three times and he’s fighting off the cops. It looked like a fake video because I feel like if they were cops, they would have taken down the guy pretty easy. If they weren’t cops, if they were security guards. I get it. But why would there be two security guards the fast food joint, but I just if you want to see some funny tasing moments, go check out that video.
21:15
And one big last dumb thing I’d like to talk about is – Horace and Jasper got put in jail for their crimes. Cruella broke them out of jail. And then it was like their rap sheet got cleared and they were never in jail in the first place because I don’t think they didn’t do anything heroic to save the day. They didn’t save a cop. They didn’t do anything like that. Why were they given a scot-free slip? And how do you get those?
21:45
Anyways, that does it for Movies Are Dumb Sometimes and I made a huge blunder and I didn’t even realize it until recording this podcast like 10 minutes ago. @MoviesAreDumbS on twitter @MoviesAreDumbS that is the proper Twitter account for Movies Are Dumb Sometimes for like a year now, it’s been @MovieAreDumbS without the S so I apologize.
22:16
If any of you have gone out to find that Twitter account it’s not there it’s because it wasn’t! @MoviesAreDumbS on Twitter or you can find me at Facebook @MoviesAreDumbSometimes or just if you’re looking for more resources to reach out at me go to bloafx.com/moviesaredumbsometimes or just email me Mads, short for Movies Are Dumb Sometimes at bloafx.com and I’m still trying to – oh and make sure to subscribe to the podcast on anchor.fm, Stitcher, or I just submitted iTunes because iTunes wasn’t the anchor wasn’t getting me on iTunes for like two months now. So hopefully I can get on there.
22:56
And there’s you could find it at bloafx.com/moviesaredumbsometimes and remember, just because Hollywood’s dumb doesn’t mean you have to speak up and make them make better, a better movie.
23:12
Just because Hollywood is dumb, doesn’t mean you have to be – speak up so they make a better movie. Okay, I’m finally getting something there. We’ll get it hammered out.
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