I was in the first group. Not because the movie was perfect, not because director Kenneth Branagh's treatment of the story was more evolved than earlier adaptions, but because it was...just really, really pretty. I'll admit that's partially the costume-lover in me talking as she drools over Sandy Powell's incredible work. But it's also an appreciation for the colors, the setting, the music, and the amazing Cate Blanchett, in combination with what was a classic story, told with nice pacing (by a fantastic narrator). I get frustrated that a movie can't just be a "nice" movie. That's what Cinderella was: admittedly not groundbreaking, or a reinvention of the wheel...but nice. You don't go out for a cocktail at dinner, order a chocolate milk, and complain that it's not hard enough. Chocolate milk is delicious. Don't scoff at it because you thought you were getting a martini.
You know the plot, so I won't rehash it in full. An orphaned Cinderella (or Ella) is emotionally trampled by her cruel stepmother and selfish stepsisters, but with the help of her fairy godmother (played by our aforementioned fantastic narrator, Helena Bonham Carter) and a little magic, attends a ball, captures the prince's heart, is found by him despite the conniving of her stepmother and the Grand Duke, and lives happily ever after. I'm not even boiling the story down that far: that really is it. But. BUT.
Ella's mantra, inherited from her mother (Agent Carter's Hayley Atwell) - "Have courage and be kind" - is the gravy to the meat of the movie. It inspires Ella's every choice, even the choice to seemingly take her stepmother's cruelty lying down. Another's review said something to the effect of, "It doesn't take courage to let yourself get walked all over".
True, and false.
It does take courage to withstand the kind of mean-spirited vindictiveness Ella did for the sake of the home that she refused to lose to the woman who had invaded and upturned her life. That's what sold Lily James's sweet and innocent Ella for me,when normally, I'd beg the girl to grow a spine. The single line of Ella's a lot of people seem to have brushed over, spoken when her servant friend asks why she doesn't leave instead of sticking around for her step-family to bully. The house Lady Tremaine has made a hostile place has been in Ella's family for two-hundred years; it's her home. Her father tells her in the last conversation we see the two of them share before his death that part of him and Ella's mother will always be there, a part of it. I wouldn't want to leave it to the whims of Lady Tremaine, either.
All in all, coming from someone who watches Drew Barrymore's Ever After on an almost monthly basis, Cinderella holds up to its predecessors with its own splash of vibrant color and just the right flourish of dreaminess. Don't try to weigh it against the original animation or the version with Brandy. Just watch it for what it is...a nice movie.
As a side note, I'm not sure what to tell the people coming out of the experience frustrated that Cinderella's happy ending was wrapped up in a prince she'd only met twice. I mean, it's Cinderella. Chocolate milk, you guys. Chocolate milk.
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