Cruella * * * *

I wasn't expecting too much from this but I was very pleasantly surprised. It's great fun!

As the title suggests this is the biography of the wicked Cruella de Vil from the 1960's Disney animation 101 Dalmatians.  It time shifts things a bit but all for the better.  

It's a clever story which offers many explanations as to how Cruella came about. and why she has a testing relationship with Dalmatians.  Interestingly both she and Dalmatians have black and white hair.

Pleased to meet you.
Won't you guess my name?

In this film Cruella is born in the sixties and soon to become an orphan on the streets of London.

But prior to that we are given further background and an encounter with her nemesis  "Baroness". A vain and dominant monster in the world of fashion (you know the type).

Cruella's relationship with Baroness is the real catalyst of the story, and truths are revealed that are kind of fun and kind of blindingly obvious.

As a child on the streets, Cruella meets up with a couple of likely lads and wizened street urchins who take her in. The three of them become a fun trio of pickpockets, thieves and vagabonds.  But all the time Cruella is drawing, creating and remaining obsessed with fashion. 

Really, there were two glorious fashion opportunities for the producers - the sixties Carnaby Street fashion explosion,  or the DIY creativity of the punk/ new wave movement of the seventies and the "New Romantic" period that follows. They chose the latter. 

The late seventies is a perfect era for her ambitious and outrageous garments.   The look of the whole thing is beautiful to say the least.  I don't' think there was ever a dull moment. Then of course there is the thumping soundtrack with music from that era and the era of her childhood. If I have one complaint, it would be the selection of seventies music seemed sanitized, with The Sex Pistols being conspicuously absent. The Stooges "I Wanna Be Your Dog" is a cover version.

It's directed by Craig Gillespie (I Tonya).  The two Emma's - Thompson as Baroness and Stone as Cruella are superb in their roles, (and so are all the doggies).