Kenneth Branagh’s Cinderella

[Holmes]

In Walt Disney Studios' big-budget and largely faithful new live-action update of corporation cornerstone Cinderella, the form shines more than the content. The storyline is well-known and, a few diversions and flourishes excepted, honored here: once upon a time in an unspecified kingdom, protagonist Ella's childhood idyll gives way to perilous domestic blending and ashen-faced servitude in a whirlwind of parental death until her fairy godmother spirits her to a luxurious ball where she can dance with the dashing prince. Kenneth Branagh directs this version with a level of detail-oriented pageantry reminiscent of his masterful and momentous adaptation of Hamlet two decades ago. The camera glides and spins, and the opulent flair of the frame-enveloping art direction—the fabric! the furniture! the paintings! the sculptures!—is outmatched only by the evocative and luxurious costume design, ranging from the malevolent stepmother's severe-chic wardrobe (vile at heart, but astonishing in emerald green) to Ella's central ball gown, a cerulean and crystalline spectacle hypnotic in motion.

Branagh has also convened a fine cast. Two-time Academy Award champion Cate Blanchett is invited to pose, glance with murderous intent, and exude a general, delicious, just-shy-of-camp air of the diabolical. She is fun, but the fresh-faced and relatively inexperienced Lily James may have a harder role. Since this is not a revisionist film, her Ella, as a heroine, must swing widely around any hint of the prefix "anti-." She must not rage against either her tormentors or her circumstances. Instead, she can only quietly cry in private and register as an earnest, heartfelt martyr who believes it impolite to object to inequity. "Forgive them, Fairy Godmother, for they know not what they do!" Within such confines, James delivers a charming performance. She is subtle, but animated. There is an authentic sense of wonder in her eyes, and hers is a great, yet still down-to-earth beauty.

So why does this film, well-designed, well-shot, and acted by a capable ensemble, not soar as it should? It is hard to say. Perhaps it is too picture-perfect, practiced and safe. The intended lows of the drama—the death of various parents, the abuse of Ella in the domestic sphere—never sting, and the intended highs of adventure and romance register as elementary and preordained rather than alive, dangerous, or sexy. A few of the detours from traditional Cinderella lore are undernourished, including the political subterfuge of a modestly dastardly grand duke played by Stellan Skarsgård on autopilot. At the end, despite the various delights on display (sartorial and otherwise), it is hard to not to shrug and say, "Yes, this certainly was Cinderella" and forget much of the experience on the way out.

C+