Disclaimer: I am not a movie critic, this is just my opinion.
Growing up, my favorite Disney princess was Cinderella. I watched the animated Disney version of Cinderella more than one hundred times, I had a Cinderella doll as my prized possession, and I was the coveted icon on Halloween for two years in a row. So, when I heard that Amazon was making a new version of Cinderella, I ready to experience that feeling of childhood nostalgia.
When the movie came out, I texted my friends and made them all watch it with me. 1 hour and 53 minutes later, we were left with a lot of thoughts, a lot of questions, and a lot of concerns. With that being said, here are my thoughts on the movie that Amazon decided to call “Cinderella”.
In the Amazon version of Cinderella, the plot line is essentially the same as the original. We all know that the evil stepmother locks Cinderella away. A few events occur in between (like that carriage made out of a pumpkin… who thought of that?) only for Cinderella and her prince to live happily ever after.
Now, imagine that exact plot line except Cinderella wants to run a clothing business and low key embarrasses herself in public in order to get her designs out there and the evil stepmother is a former piano genius for some reason. While I love that they didn’t stick to the original plot entirely and tried to put their own spin on it, they did not do it well and it just added random plot lines that were confusing to follow and took away from the original plot of the movie instead of adding to it.
While the random plot lines were difficult to watch, the cast list was really my next issue with the new Cinderella movie. The movie which boasts Camilla Cabello as Cinderella and James Corden as one of the mice went from being something that I was enthusiastic to watch to something that I knew was going to be the next Cats or disaster.
As someone who is not a fan of both Camilla Cabello and James Corden, I knew that it was going to be hard to watch them play those characters and I was right. Camilla Cabello, who is best known for her singing talents and not her acting, just looked kind of awkward while attempting to show emotion throughout the movie and you could tell that she was not in her element.
There are so many singers such as Selena Gomez and Miley Cyrus who can effortlessly transition between acting and singing. Camilla Cabello is not one of them. James Corden played, well, James Corden or the mouse version of himself which I consider to be the best casting choice but in the worst way possible. The only saving grace when it came to casting was Billy Porter who killed it as the fairy godmother but unfortunately, he was barely in the movie.
No matter how confusing the plot was and how underwhelming the casting choices were, nothing can compare to how terrible the music choices were. The movie producers boldly decided to make the movie a jukebox musical meaning that the cast was singing mostly covers of songs that are already well-known, which I think was the worst possible decision.
The fact that I had to listen to “Somebody to Love” by Queen, “Perfect” by Ed Sheeran, and “Let’s Get Loud” by Jennifer Lopez all in the same musical not sung by their original artists feels like a crime. I understand that it’s supposed to be a modernized version of Cinderella but it just felt like the songs were randomly thrown in to supplement the dialogue.
While the movie was kind of thrown together, the musical performances alone for this movie may have made it Razzie-worthy.
Overall, this movie was about 1 hour and 53 minutes of my life that I will never get back no matter how hard I try. If you or someone you know is planning on watching it, I urge you to first reconsider, and if that doesn’t work, to lower your expectations.
Happy watching, collegiettes!