MUM'S THE WORD (CRUELLA)

Craig Gillespie's '101 Dalmatians' origin tale 'Cruella' is bursting full of ideas and movie influences.

Not only is it packed full of references to the original 1961 Disney animated '101 Damatians' feature but it also pays homage to Alfred Hitchcock ('Psycho' and 'Lifeboat'), 'The Devil Wears Prada,' 'All About Eve,''Matilda' and 'Phantom Thread'.

However the film it bears its strongest resemblance to is Todd Philips' 'Joker'.

Like 'Joker,' Gillespie's film is an origin story about a villain who has been terribly treated in life.

As in Philips' film, the anti-hero adopts a new persona to exact revenge, only for that persona to consume her.

And when she exacts revenge, it is executed in a hugely theatrical way - just like Arthur Fleck's transformation from an introverted, struggling standup comic to flamboyant Batman villain.

With Emma Stone's Estella/Cruella narrating, Gillespie's movie begins with Tipper Seifert-Cleveland's 12 year old version arriving at a posh school with her mum, Emily Beecham's Catherine.

Estella has already demonstrated a natural flair as a child for fashion design and she sports a distinctive hairstyle that is half black and half white.

However her precociousness and strong sense of individuality results in her becoming the target of bullying boys in a school that tries to impose conformity and bleed its pupils dry of any creativity.

Estella, however, is no wilting lily.

She often bests her tormentors, only to end up in the headmaster's study to be reprimanded for inflicting pain on them.

She does forge one friendship, though - Florisa Kamara's Anita "Tattletale" Darling who, as an adult, will blossom into Kirby Howell-Baptiste's newspaper gossip columnist.

When Leo Bill's headmaster finally moves to have Estella expelled, Catherine outwits him by quitting her daughter from school before he can besmirch her academic record.

Catherine instead packs up their belongings and heads to London with Estella and her trusty dog Buddy but en route stops off at a mansion where a high society party is taking place.

Urging Estella to remain inside their car with Buddy, she goes off to talk to a mystery person.

Estella, however, cannot be contained and sneaks out with Buddy into the fashionable party, only for Mark Strong's valet John to spot her and have her expelled.

A chase ensues and in the melee, three growling Dalmatians pursue Buddy and Estella, who make it onto the balcony where Catherine is engaged in her conversation with the mystery figure.

The Dalmatians rush towards Catherine who plunges to her death and, as they switch their attention back to a deeply shocked Estella and Buddy, the girl drops a necklace she had borrowed from her mum.

Estella and Buddy manage to escape to Regent's Park in London where she stumbles upon two boys who make a living 'Oliver Twist' style as pickpockets - Ziggy Gardner's Jasper and Joseph MacDonald's Horace.

With the police assuming she is part of their gang, she and Buddy escape with them, retreating to their den in a dilapidated house and becomes part of their family.

Emma Stone's adult Estella, Joel Fry's Jasper and Paul Walter Hauser's Horace become very adept at robbing bus passengers and other citizens.

Putting Estella's fashion skills to good use, their thieving operations become more elaborate with her making costumes to disguise them.

For her birthday, however, Jasper lands her job at the Liberty department store on the West End but Estella is frustrated when on her first day at work she realises it is as a cleaner.

Her efforts to impress Jamie Demitriou's obsequious snob Gerald and persuade him to give her a design role are ignored.

One night, however, she gets drunk and ends up sleeping in the shop window after stylishly dressing a dummy.

The display attracts a huge crowd and Gerald moves to have her fired until Emma Thompson's fashion design icon, The Baroness arrives with John, Andrew Leung's assistant Jeffrey and the rest of her entourage in tow.

Lambasting Estella's design, Gerald tells the Baroness he has fired Estella, only to be stunned when she is hired by the designer.

Estella begins a new dream job at the fashion house but quickly realises it is slave labour, with the Baroness belittling many of the employees' work and claiming credit for their best designs.

However as she rises through the ranks, she discovers one day that the Baroness is wearing the necklace she lost when Catherine died.

Realising the Baroness was responsible for her mother's death, she seeks vengeance.

Recruiting Jasper, Horace and John McCrea's fashion shop owner Artie to the cause, she hatches an elaborate plot to create the persona of Cruella, a flamboyant rival fashion designer who gets under The Baroness' skin by constantly stealing her limelight.

With her punk ethic a la Vivienne Westwood, Cruella regularly upstages the Baroness, much to her rival's annoyance who decides to have her bumped off.

But can Estella, who becomes increasingly trapped in her malevolent new persona, avoid death and avenge Catherine, while keeping an increasingly alienated Jasper and Horace on board?

Working with screenwriters Dana Fox and Tony McNamara, Gillespie turns in a stylish, highly entertaining Gothic family adventure laced with high camp and a lot of acerbic wit.

A lot of the credit should also go to Aline Brosh McKenna, Kelly Marcel and Steve Zissis who initially concocted the story for Gillespie's film.

The movie also looks superb, thanks to Nicolas Karakatsanis' stylish cinematography, art director Martin Foley, Fiona Crombie's Gothic production design, Carolyn Cousins' hair and makeup team and Jenny Beavan's stunning costumes.

However it is the quality of the screenwriting that shines through, with a robust narrative structure and some choice dialogue for the cast to sink their teeth into.

Not only is the movie an entertaining, tongue in cheek romp, it also tackles inequality, hypocrisy, feminine power and the theft of intellectual property.

With her plundering of her designers' work and passing it off as her own, Gillespie and his writers make the point that Thompson's Baroness is no less of a thief than Estella, Jasper and Horace. 

She is also no believer in the sisterhood - wishing to crush any woman that dares to share her limelight.

“You can’t care about anyone else,” she  says rather tellingly at one point.

“Everyone else is an obstacle. You care what an obstacle wants or feels, you’re dead. 

"If I cared about anyone or thing, I might have died like so many brilliant women with a drawer full of unseen genius and a heart full of sad bitterness. 

"You have the talent for your own label. Whether you have the killer instinct is the big question.”

Thompson has a ball in the chief villain's role, channeling Joan Collins' levels of camp and Bette Davis levels of ruthlessness as she dismisses everyone in her eyeline.

But there also hints of Margaret Thatcher in her character's philosophy in a movie that is set during the Conservative leader's rise to power in the 1970s.

For 'Cruella' to succeed, it needs Stone to go toe to toe with Thompson and she is indeed matched by her fellow Oscar winner.

Stone in many ways has the much tougher gig - trying to get the balance right between the two personas of Estella and Cruella.

However she wears it well.

Fry and Hauser make amusing sidekicks - the latter channeling the spirit of Bob Hoskins as he gamely takes on a Cockney accent.

Strong is brilliantly cast as The Baroness' henchman and Howell-Baptiste amuses as Anita whose newspaper coverage has a critical role to play in Estella/Cruella's plans to destroy her rival.

Beecham is suitably sweet as Catherine but not sickly sweet, while there are enjoyable supporting turns from McCrea, Demitriou, Bill, Leung and Kayvan Novak as the Baroness' inept lawyer Roger Dearly.

Origin stories have to work especially hard to justify their appearance on the big screen and 'Cruella' certainly does that. 

Like 'Maleficent' and 'Joker,' we are asked to have sympathy for De Vil - a point rammed home by Gillespie's tongue in cheek use of The Rolling Stones' track - and it certainly succeeds.

Using tracks by Supertramp, the Bee Gees, the Doors, Nina Simone, Ike and Tina Turner, ELO, Queen,Blondie, The Clash, Doris Day, Georgia Gibbs and amazingly Joe Dolan, as well as an original by Florence and the Machine, 'Cruella' also boasts one of the smartest movie soundtracks of 2021.

Mischievous, vibrant and relentlessly camp, it is undoubtedly one of the most entertaining movies to make it into multiplexes this year.

After 18 months of Covid restrictions, that's what we all needed.

('Cruella' opened in UK and Irish cinemas on May 28, 2021 and was made available for streaming on Disney+)

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