12. Cinderella (1950)

After eight years of production troubles, six package films and countless scrapped or retooled ideas for new films, Disney finally returned to full length features with Cinderella. And wow, what a fucking disappointment. Cinderella is so white bread, so basic, so derivative, it’s honestly kind of embarrassing to watch; not only does Disney not take a step forward here, they take a huge, graceless leap backwards. After already stinging from the commercial failures of Pinocchio, Fantasia and Bambi, Disney continued to take hits with a string of financial disappointments throughout the 40’s. By this point, they were in the red and needed another hit – thankfully for them, Cinderella was a smash hit and their biggest success since Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, which is not too surprising considering how shamelessly Cinderella borrows from that film. This leaves the film with a very bittersweet after taste, on the one hand it revitalised Disney financially and allowed them to carry on making films, increase their budget and, in some cases, be more creative and elaborate in the future; on the other hand, to get to that point we had to have Cinderella. A fair trade? To be honest, I’m not so sure.

The animation is one of the film’s better points, which says a lot considering how bland this animation is. It’s mostly decent and gets the job done, but it is so lacking in any energy or creativity, the animation only ever does what it has to – there are next to none of Disney’s inventively wacky uses of animation, no exaggerated movements, no interesting use of shape, perspective or colour, every piece of animation is only as complex as it needs to be to amount to the bare minimum. I imagine that this was due to Disney’s financial issues, causing them to cut back on the more elaborate style they were used to and keep things simple, but that’s not much of an excuse for this dull, lifeless animation. The art design is even more bland, the animal critters are generically cutesy and cartoony, with no real sense of personality, most of the human characters look like bored, cardboard cut-outs of people with no interesting design quirks – Prince Charming in particular looks like a Ken doll, appropriate considering how rigid and lifeless his character is - and the few that are more exaggerated in their design, like the King and Duke, just look silly and poorly thought out.

The art style of the movie in general, is lifted pretty heavily from Snow White – being just one of the many things Cinderella takes from it – it appears as if the animators just traced over most of the characters from Snow White and then coloured their hair in a little different. The animal critters have the same kind of style and look, Cinderella and Prince Charming are basically Snow White and the Prince, just with some of the more uncanny and awkward parts of their facial design and animation fixed and in the case of Cinderella, different hair. Most embarrassing of all is Lady Tremaine, whose character model is based so obviously on the Evil Queen’s you can tell that the writers basically just gave up and said ‘Fuck it let’s just make her the Queen from Snow White, the kids won’t notice.’ I mean Christ, she has the exact same green eyes, the same lips, the same scowling face – there’s one point where she gives this evil look and her eyes narrow and the shot looks pretty much entirely lifted from Snow White it is laughable. Like I said, the animation is hardly the weakest part of the movie, despite the lazy art and character designs and restrained movements, it looks decent enough and the colours at least are very nice. Still, considering Disney are, you know, an animation studio, it’s disappointing to see them take such a step back and produce animation that’s not even on the same level as most of their package films, which were made with limited staff and serious budget cuts.

Cool this doesn’t look creepy at all great job guys

The story is absolutely pathetic, again taking far too much from previous films and then padding out its few copied ideas for as long as possible until it can hit the running time they wanted. At the base of the story is, once again, Snow White: a beautiful and kind young woman lives with her evil stepmother, who schemes to get rid of her, but the heroine eventually succeeds and is whisked away to a life of luxury with a handsome prince. This is as standard as it gets, with Snow White you can forgive this, because these clichés hadn’t really been established yet – at least, not as part of Disney’s films – and it was their first film, they were still trying out their style and so stuck to a relatively basic fairy tale. Cinderella however, came eleven films and thirteen years later, at this point Disney should be beyond this very basic story and certainly shouldn’t be taking steps backwards by copying their very first film; the story doesn’t even work as well, because Cinderella is so stuffed with pointless scenes to further stretch out its nonexistent plot and push up the running time.

When you think of Cinderella, you think of that little synopsis, a girl living as a slave for her stepsisters and stepmother, before going to the ball, meeting the prince and then proving she’s the girl he met by showing she fits the glass slipper she left behind. However, that only comprises about half of the film, the rest of it is taken up with dreadfully boring scenes of a cat chasing mice; every time we see Cinderella and have the “plot” advanced at all, we then have to watch a five minute long scene of some cartoon animals dicking around. Seriously, it is insane how much of this film is wasted with this Tom and Jerry shit, unfortunately, unlike Tom and Jerry this isn’t funny on ANY LEVEL. I legitimately don’t understand how Disney thought this would be entertaining in any way, were they seriously looking at these scenes, laughing their asses off and ensuring each other ‘Yeah this is a good idea, the kids will love this. When you hear the name Cinderella you think of fucking mice running away from cats and making dresses.’ It’s filler, plain and simple and that’s a crime to begin with, but even worse is the fact that this filler takes up almost as much of the film as the main story does; I understand that Cinderella is a pretty basic fairy tale where not much happens, making it hard to expand into a full length film, but to be honest therein lies my point, they shouldn’t have made a fucking full length feature film out of Cinderella.

Pictured: 65% of the scenes in Cinderella (Spoilers: No unfortunately the mouse doesn’t die)

Not only is the plot bogged down by constant irrelevant scenes of animal shenanigans, which don’t add to the story on any level, but it suffers from perhaps an even greater issue – Cinderella has no stakes. Now on the face, it does, Cinderella is treated like a slave by her family, she lives in squalor, if she stays there she will suffer; eventually she is able to escape with Prince Charming and gets her happily ever after. But think about it, what is keeping Cinderella there? Does she need to be her family’s slave? Are they keeping her locked in a dungeon, or under armed guard, or threatening her with something? No, Cinderella could leave any damn time she wants, which raises the question WHY DOESN’T SHE JUST FUCKING LEAVE? If Cinderella hates living with her family so much, why does she? They clearly don’t want her around, I’m sure they’d be happy to see her go and even if not, they seem to stay in their rooms all day and pay no attention to her, so she could easily sneak off if she wanted – she hardly has much to bring with her. I’m sure she wouldn’t have much money and that might be a problem, but if she’s just going to work as a scullery maid for her bitchy stepsisters, who treat her like crap, why not just go work for someone else? She’s not their slave, they don’t own her, she can work for someone else if she wants; working as a scullery maid probably sucks no matter what, but at least if she works for someone else Cinderella will not only have shelter, but might actually get paid and not treated like scum.

I would even be willing to give Disney the benefit of the doubt and accept the idea that Cinderella stays with her family because she doesn’t want to leave her father’s château, as it holds a special place in her heart (although this is clearly giving them far too much credit) but obviously that isn’t the case either because the second Cinderella meets the Duke, she just pisses off to go live with Prince Charming in the castle. The story relies entirely on Cinderella being an idiot, if she thought like a rational or realistic person on any level she would just take her stupid mice friends and go live somewhere else and the film would never happen, nothing is stopping her and she has nothing to lose; I have no sympathy for Cinderella, nor do I care what happens in the story, because she could easily solve her problems – when the stakes for the film rely entirely on your character being stupid and pointlessly passive, it becomes impossible to immerse yourself in it.

You’re so vain you probably think this film’s about you. Well it’s not. It’s about mice.

This passivity also makes it difficult to care about Cinderella as a character, again, she is just Snow White, not only somewhat in character design but pretty much completely in personality. She is sweet, but dull, completely passive and unwilling to take any action towards helping her own situation, she just sits around dreaming, making wishes and waiting for somebody or something else to come along and help her. Like Snow White, the only areas in which she is allowed to be active and competent are cooking, cleaning, washing, sewing, you know, chick’s stuff. Again, you could forgive the sexist undertones in Snow White and yes, Cinderella was still made in a time where women’s rights weren’t exactly recognised and traditional gender roles were still strongly adhered to, but come on. Disney’s narrative films so far have mostly starred boring and passive protagonists, but Cinderella is probably the worst of all, like her predecessors, her story progresses entirely as a result of other characters’ actions – the mice make her dress for her, the Fairy Godmother makes it so she can go to the ball, the Duke comes to find her, the mice get her out of her locked room, the Duke takes her to Prince Charming who marries her, taking her away from all her problems and letting her live happily ever after. NONE of this is due to Cinderella’s actions or hard work, the only times she is allowed to work hard and make progress is when she is doing housework. On top of this, we have Cinderella and Prince Charming spending only a couple of hours together before they supposedly fall in love and decide to marry, an idea that wasn’t as cliché in Snow White but at this point has become so tired and silly that even the Duke acknowledges how stupid and unrealistic it is. This, along with such wonderful moments as the male mice being happily told to ‘leave the sewing to the women!’ Gives the film an uncomfortably sexist undertone that makes it very hard to enjoy, even when you try and understand the social context at the time, it’s still just a little too much – Snow White got away with it, but Disney dropped the ball trying to pull this shit again.

A banner year at the old Bender family

The other characters are just as tedious and unlikeable in different ways, the Ugly Stepsisters are just catty and annoying, they get a couple of funny lines in but other than that they’re woefully undeveloped. Lady Tremaine is, as said, pretty much a carbon copy of the Evil Queen in look, style and attitude, but instead of being an enjoyably over the top megalomaniac she’s just kind of a bitch. It’s kind of interesting to see a Disney villain that’s played a little more low-key and realistic and she is appropriately cold and restrained, but the most fun and entertaining part of the Evil Queen’s character was how ridiculously evil she was, you couldn’t help enjoying how much she seemed to enjoy being a villain. Tremaine’s attempts at realism then, just make her seem more like a watered down and less charming version of the Evil Queen, perhaps if she had more of an original character design, motivation or personality this wouldn’t be a problem, but because she is so similar to the Evil Queen in every other way you can’t help but make the comparison. Prince Charming is barely even worth talking about, he is the most shamelessly copied from his Snow White counterpart, down to the fact that he only has about two lines, shows up in two scenes, doesn’t even get a name (Charming doesn’t count) and we get no insight into his personality whatsoever. 

The King and Duke are two of the more colourful characters and at least have some personality and a somewhat fun dynamic between them, but it devolves pretty quickly into lazy slapstick so whatever, not much to say. The Fairy Godmother, despite being one of the most remembered parts of the film, is only in one scene and just kind of shows up out of nowhere with practically no explanation and then just leaves, she’s not even worth talking about, there’s nothing to say. Worst of all are the animal characters, particularly the mice, who plague this film with their goofy antics which we are obviously supposed to think are cute and endearing, but they come off only as irritating time wasters. If you are one of the five or so people who actually reads this blog (Thanks, by the way!), you may recall me talking in Snow White about a character archetype I like to call “The Hooter”, a clumsy, stupid character obviously designed to be the loveable comic relief and, hopefully, the breakout character; the mice are basically an entire group of this archetype. They talk in weird, overly cutesy voices where they pronounce things wrong and repeat words and awwww look how adorable they are awww you guys. It’s so plainly manipulative, Disney’s attempts to push these goddamn mice as the lovable, goofy sidekicks to Cinderella that the audience can’t help but love only make them even more annoying; worst of all is the fact that they take up so much of the plot and appear almost as often as Cinderella herself, just so they can participate in irrelevant slapstick scenes with the cat that are completely devoid of any humour or entertainment value. If you can call one in particular the Hooter it has to be Gus, a fat, stupid little mouse who even kind of looks like Hooter, at least in terms of his shape and certainly acts like him – running around like an idiot, falling over, screwing up his friend’s plans and constantly causing them grief, but we’re clearly supposed to love him cos he’s so cute and funny guys what a goofball ahahah!!!! These mice shouldn’t even be in the movie, let alone be such a big part of it, they’re just the worst.

‘Is... is that mouse wearing a little hat?’

The songs suck, they are as generic and derivative as you can imagine, in its musicals Disney has a tendency to have one or two sappy songs in the mix, songs that tend to be about love, dreams or wishes, usually on stars. Now when these are just one part of the picture, they can work well – I like to refer to this type of song as the “Whole New World Number”, because most of Aladdin’s songs are fun and energetic, except for “A Whole New World”, which, while good, is a very slow and generic love song that doesn’t really gel with the others and seems to be in the film just to fill some kind of quota. With that in mind, picture Cinderella as a whole film of “Whole New World Numbers”, almost every song is an overly sugar sweet, slow song about loves, dreams, wishes etc. They all sound exactly the same and they are all boring, the lyrics lack any creativity, the music is generic and overall they all come off as desperate attempts to recapture the magic of “When You Wish Upon a Star”. I mean really, “A Dream is a Wish Your Heart Makes” is basically the same thing, it is embarrassing how derivative these songs are. The only half-way decent songs are “The Work Song” which is at least a little fun, but is ruined by the annoying singing voices of the mice and “Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo”, which to be fair is pretty good. The lyrics are hardly clever or well thought out and it’s constantly interrupted to have the Fairy Godmother talk, but at least it’s catchy and fun to listen to, which is much more I can say about any of the others.

‘Hey do you guys think this might be a bit too much like that scene in Snow White where...’

‘DO NOT SPEAK OF THE OLD ONES YOU INSOLENT CUR AND RESUME WHISTLING WHILE YOU WORK’

This movie is just a waste of time, it is boring, unoriginal, schmaltzy, packed to the brim with filler and lacking in any creativity to the point where Disney actually copies itself. The songs are crappy, the characters are either completely undeveloped or relentlessly irritating, the animation is lazy and thoughtless and the story is predicated on the protagonist being a completely ineffectual moron and goes absolutely nowhere interesting. To call Cinderella a disappointment is an understatement, as the first full length narrative feature in eight years, it had a lot to live up to and boy, did it miss the mark spectacularly. To say this is not a worthy follow up to Bambi is obvious, but it’s not even a worthy follow up to Snow White, this honestly seems like it should be the first Disney movie, before they developed their style along with any sense of depth or creativity. When people decry Disney for being sexist, overly cutesy and always focused around silly fairy tales about boring women falling in love with boring Princes they met five minutes ago and living happily ever after despite barely knowing each other, this is probably what they’re thinking of. Cinderella is so bad it marred the entire Disney name with its idiotic story, boring characters and Hallmark card sentimentality; fuck Cinderella, and her little mice too.

Other Thoughts

• Wait, did the cat just die?

Jesus Christ I thought this was Cinderella, not Milo and Otis

3/10

Next Week: Alice in Wonderland!

Email: joetalksaboutstuff@gmail.com

Twitter: @JSChilds