Cinderella (1950), 11 February 2021, streamed via Disney+
I would be remiss if I didn’t start with the OG Cinderella, right? This thing is stamped into our cultural subconscious--and I haven’t watched it for, like thirty years? This'll be interesting.
The story proper starts with Cindy lolling in bed and talking to birds like she's never had actual friends. (Spoiler: She has not.) Then she yells at the town clocktower the way I reproach my alarm clock. Then she cheerily makes her bed, so that’s the end of the very short time where I identified with Our Heroine.
Also, Cindy has ready-made clothing for mice stored in her desk, which really rates the question of how, exactly, she’s imposed her Western prudishness on free animals. Girl. But did anyone remember how much of this movie is about the variety of animals in the household trying to damage each other? It got real Tom and Jerry up in here is what I’m saying. We don’t even meet Evil Stepmother until fifteen minutes in!
Meanwhile, guys, I think Cinderella lives in the palace of Arendelle. (I appreciate that Cindy’s reaction to being dumped on with chores is indignation about her previous cleaning not being appreciated. Rock on, girl. Take pride in your work.)
Same architect, at least?
The ball is actually the king’s version of a surprise episode of The Bachelor. Throw the prince into a room full of honey, wait until he scopes one, then “soft light,” the king says. What? Is that a euphemism? (You guys...there’s like a million takes on this story where the prince is Just Not Interested in women, aren’t there?) How are all these women able to prep and convene in the space of an afternoon?!
The stepsisters just all-out ripping Cinderella’s dress apart remains viscerally upsetting.
And then Cinderella’s reaction is weeping, There’s nothing left to believe in, which is a waaaaay more concerning than a ruined outfit. But who doesn’t like a makeover, amirite?
Cinderella and the prince doing the dumb “love at first sight” thing is ugh. They didn’t even actually talk! There’s no, like, “Hi, I’m Ella Tremaine, and I am currently being forced to work as a chambermaid for my stepfamily.” No, “Hi, I’m a prince of indeterminate personality with no name who apparently has never shown interest in the ladies until this very moment.” And then she has to leave, and they try to lock her in the palace grounds and send guards after her? And then the king tries to kill the messenger (and accuses him of losing the girl as being “in league with the prince all along,” wtf). This romance is a TRAP, girl, GET OUT.
Anyway, the real heroes of this story are the mice and Cinderella is incidental.
Cinderella II: Dreams Come True, 12 February 2021, streamed via Disney+
I wasn’t actually going to do the two Disney sequels, or at least not so early on, but I realized that, if I do want to pinpoint whether these characters have distinct character-ness, I should probably get the full picture. Anyway, this is an anthology of stories.
Story #1: It’s Cinderella’s first day in the castle, and the king makes the prince leave on a work trip while Cinderella is left to plan a royal banquet. SMASH THE PATRIARCHY.
Cindy, bless her, wakes at dawn and starts cooking breakfast for her own damn self. Much to the horror of Prudence, keeper of the rules or whatever, and ladies-in-waiting Beatrice and Daphne. Then Cinderella charms them all with her intense dedication to kindness and fun, rather than courtesy and tradition. Etc, etc.
Story #2 is about the planning of the Spring festival and the mice feeling inadequate now that Cinderella’s a princess. So Jaq asks the fairy godmother to change him into a human. Thus, shenanigans. (Cinderella is...overseeing the construction of the fairgrounds? What the hell? How did this kingdom function without her?)
The prince only shows up for a ribbon-cutting ceremony, because the prince is friggin’ useless, guys, it’s unbelievable.
Story #3 presents the wicked stepsister Anastasia as a protagonist who just wants to be looooooved. With some machinations a la Cindy, Anastasia hooks up with the town baker. Similarly, the mice give Lucifer a hand in wooing castle cat Pom-pom.
Cinderella III: A Twist in Time, 13 February 2021, streamed via Disney+
We start out with Cinderella and the prince celebrating their anniversary, and then there’s some shenanigans wherein Anastasia gets a hold of the fairy godmother’s wand and accidentally en-statues her. And thus did the Wicked Stepmother use the wand to undo all the events of the first movie. Or, more precisely, WS, Anastasia, and Drizella go back in time a year and then they use the wand to make the glass slipper fit Anastasia.
Meanwhile, we get an excellent scene of the prince and the king fencing and talking about what it means to fall in love. Hilariously, the king asks, “You think there’s only one woman in the whole kingdom who wears a size four and a half?” as if he’s not the one who ordered the search in the first place.
The prince doubts his sanity because mice start talking to him, it turns out the king is actually a softie who gives Anastasia the late queen’s lucky seashell, and Cinderella gets banished and sent off on a ship. When that plan doesn’t work, WS goes evil mastermind and wand-whammies Anastasia into a Cinderella clone. But Cindy goes full badass: She punches her way out of a magic monster pumpkin, jumps off a runaway coach onto a spooked horse, then fights her way barefoot into the castle just in time to see Anastasia do the right thing and stop the fake wedding.
Yada yada yada, everybody lives happily ever after, except for WS and Drizella, who get turned into frogs. Also, the timeline never gets restored, so.
Rodger & Hammerstein’s Cinderella (1965), 14 February 2021, streamed via Tubi
Internet-wise, there is a surprising confusion about the Julie Andrews version and the Lesley Ann Warren version. IDEK, guys. (If you’re looking for random Cinderella adaptations, Tubi is chock-full of them.)
So in the R&H version, the prince and Cinderella meet when he randomly stops by their cottage to get a drink of water. She, not recognizing the prince and company, tells them she’s afraid her stepmother would beat her if she found out she helped strangers, but she helps them out anyway. This is an extremely different meet cute, y’all. BUT, while the prince sings a whole ballad about how he will totally know when he meets his true love, he had no such spark with our dear Cindy. (She, of course, develops an instant crush.)
Anyway, this prince, though he happily has a personality, turns out to be a dick. He peremptorily dismisses both of the stepsisters (Esmerelda and Prunella) for, respectively, batting eyes and creaky knees. They’re just awkward, dude! No need to mock them right to their faces. And, of course, he "falls in love" with Cinderella in the space of the dance, which remains RIDIC no matter how much they try to convince us otherwise. (Look, I am wholeheartedly of the belief that arranged marriages--as, essentially, is what’s happening in this narrative--can work well, but stop trying to sell this love as first sight crap.)
Cindy, 15 February 2021, streamed via YouTube
A very young Charlyne Woodard stars as “Cinderella in Harlem,” set in 1943 New York, and she travels by bus to live with her father. Unfortunately, it turns out her father didn’t tell his new family about his previous family, oof, and her new stepmother is NOT cool with it.
Traveling Cindy on the left, Cindy and Captain Joe Prince on the right.
After getting a list of chores, Cindy asks the stepsisters what they’re going to do. When they tell her they’ll be making themselves beautiful for the dance, Cindy mutters, “Looks like I got the short list.”
The musical numbers are uniformly excellent.
And I like a Cinderella story where her father is a tryer-and-failer. (He tells the family he’s a doorman at a fancy hotel when he’s actually a bathroom attendant.) Part of what’s great about this Cindy is how she tries to keep a bright disposition so her father doesn’t feel bad about disappointing her. Not that he’s entirely fooled: “You’re so brave, I could die,” he tells her at one point.
Captain Joe Prince is amazingly overdone: He’s introduced at the ball as a local hero, and he starts his brief talk by telling them about how the President just gave him a medal for saving 100+ people. “I guess I express myself best by wiping out machine-gun nests,” he says in his proposal, “There’s not another woman in the world I’d be prouder to have as my widow.” *shakes head*
In an excellent turn, Cindy finds out neighbor Michael got fired when his boss finds him returning the purloined dress and realizes she’d rather be with someone who takes risks for her sake instead of someone who brought a photographer to his proposal. Cindy straight-up jumps off her fire escape to catch Michael before he goes off to war because the best Cinderellas do NOT have time for waffling.
Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Cinderella (1997), 16 February 2021, streamed via Disney+
I remember when this first came out, and all the media were like, Actual color-blind casting! GASP. But srsly, Brandy is just perfect in this role. Also, having the prince (FILIPINO REPRESENT) meet Cinderella randomly in the market is so much more meet cute than him having his escort plead with a housemaid for a drink of water that he could have gotten his own damn self.
Ye gods, this cast is STACKED.
And the setting is so fun--certainly much more expansive than Leslie Ann Warren’s version, which was basically an extended proscenium--because it feels very much like the interior decorator from Willy Wonka’s factory was set loose on the Music Man set.
Whoopi Goldberg and Victor Garber are funny enough that you can almost forget they have zero chemistry that signals a married couple.
In contrast, Brandy and Paolo Montalban have a really fun and relaxed chemistry. They’re like that couple that gets invited to every party because they magically are able to involve every person in conversation. On really nice days, they’ll literally go buy a kite so they can fly it at the park, and maybe give it to some adorable kids who want to learn how.
Watching this right after Cindy is a neat contrast. I have liked the R&H Cinderella better than the Disney one since she has, y’know, a personality. But in comparison with Cindy, this Cinderella is so intensely meek. It’s weird. (All Cinderellas are identifiable via their placid optimism, but that doesn’t mean she has to be, like, passive.)
Three Wishes for Cinderella (or Tri orísky pro Popelku), 17 February 2021, streamed via Apple TV
I’m jumping a bit backwards in time (back to 1973) because the Malaysian adaptation I had planned to watch wasn’t as available as I thought. So I found this one, which is Czech. The manor (quite fortress-looking), the FOREST, and the mill are all owned by Cinderella’s stepmother after her father passed away. (This all has a very Bear and the Nightingale feel to it.)
Anyway, this Cinderella is just as beloved by animals: When her stepmother gives her a bushel of peas and ashes and lentils and corn to sort out (multiple times, geez), a flock of doves arrives at her window. She has a pet owl and the barn cat and the manor dog. And, y’know, a horse. When she spots the prince and his companions hunting a doe in the woods, girl takes his crossbow out with a SNOWBALL. She leads a merry chase and temporarily steals the prince’s temperamental horse. Weird meet cute, but whatever? Later, she taunts him when he can’t climb a tree to catch her, LOL.
One of the servants gives Cinderella three hazelnuts still on the branch. Later, when she’s feeling down about not having nice hunting attire, one of the hazelnuts falls off, breaks in half, and AN ENTIRE HUNTING ENSEMBLE falls out of it. (It also, handily, disguises her as a boy.) And then it turns out the king is offering a prize for elite hunters: the first one to shoot down a bird of prey wins a fancy ring! The prince thinks it’s in the bag; Cinderella wins.
When her stepmother and stepsister Dora head to the ball, Cinderella is sad. And sure enough, the second hazelnut transforms into a gown, tiara, cloak, and of course, the shoes. (It is telegraphed pretty hard that the owl is the fairy godmother here? I don’t know, guys.) She veils herself so the prince doesn’t recognize her, and she sasses him into dancing with her when he’s trying to make a run for it.
Hilariously, he tells her, “I’ve found the bride I want,” and she’s all, “What if the bride doesn’t want you?” Then she scarpers, thus winning my heart as well as the prince’s. Shenanigans ensue.
Cinderella cracks open the last hazelnut and it is...wait for it...A WEDDING DRESS. The prince realizes she’s also the hunter from before, and the sassy urchin from before that, thus revealing she can outrun, out hunt, and outride him. Y’all, he is THRILLED. Hooray for a non-trash prince!
Ever After: A Cinderella Story, 18 February 2021, streamed via Disney+
I guess this is most folks’ preferred adaptation of the story? Alas, I am neutral on Drew Barrymore and find Dougray Scott boring, so much of the charm is fully lost on me.
What exactly was the prince’s plan? Just, like, ride until nobody would recognize him anymore. Take some responsibility, manchild. (As opposed to Danielle, wokest maiden in 16th century France, I guess.) I hope you cherish your freedom while your entire COUNTRY goes to war with SPAIN because you skipped out on your TREATY. Srsly, dude, wed Marguerite and live snobbishly-ever-after. (But really, dude seems quite taken with Marguerite, wtf.)
Danielle, although you can practically see STRONG FEMALE CHARACTER blinking above her head, is still fun. She can, after all, outrun, outsmart, and overall outmatch the prince, and that’s the best kind of Cinderella, honestly. And her fireman’s carry of the prince certainly amuses the band of Rom (who are, as she actually points out later, horrifically stereotyped).
Having a dotty Leonardo da Vinci acting in the fairy godmother role is pretty fun, I must admit. I mean, he may as well be a supernatural entity--there’s pretty much nothing about his presence that makes sense.
If not for my utter disdain for the prince, I’d probably really dig this version. You know, the version of Cinderella where Danielle rampages through the French countryside, murdering nobles with elan.
A Cinderella Story, 19 February 2021, streamed via Amazon
And it’s only now we’ve hit teen rom-com! Seriously, guys: Hillary Duff and Chad Michael Murray. Though, uh, killing Sam’s (Cinderella’s) dad off in the Northridge quake is a smidgen of TOO REAL, geez. Then there’s a running joke about California being in a drought.
Also, we’re supposed to believe Sam’s looked down upon for being a waitress, like she isn’t a teenager living in the San Fernando Valley. Also, she’s secretly anonymously IMing with someone at her high school, which OF COURSE turns out to be CMM, the stereotypical prom king being smothered by his father’s expectations, because OF COURSE he wants to be a writer, naturally, that’s always a sign of a squishy romantic heart.
Yeah, this is totally a girl who would be unpopular in high school in the freakin’ Valley. Sure.
Regina King, the diner manager, takes the role of fairy godmother when Sam decides to go to the Halloween dance. Then there’s an after-hours costume trying-out montage, but Sam ends up wearing a straight-up wedding dress and strapping on a domino mask.
They’re dancing to Edwin McCain’s "I'll Be," if you need a full picture here.
You know the rest.
Ella Enchanted, 20 February 2021, streamed via Prime Video (imdbTV)
So it’s pretty awesome that according to this story--adapted from a book by Gail Carson Levine--the reason Cinderella is so obedient is that she was cursed by an incompetent fairy godmother’s gift. She’s compelled to always obey orders! (The ball comes at the end, which is nice--the prince and Ella spend a ton of time together beforehand and have, like, an actual relationship.)
But, uh, did they have to make the incompetent fairy the only black person in the main cast? WTF, casting? Further, they opted to make Edgar a segregationist? And added an evil snake advisor? UGH. I hate being one of those, “The book is better,” people, but guys, the book is better. Speaking of books, they decided to make Ella’s magic storybook Mandy’s bespelled boyfriend. Yikes.
Anyway, it’s delightful to see Parminder Nagra as exchange student Areida (also, the only other POC, aside from a single librarian, sigh), Anne Hathaway is note-perfect as the sassy and intensely frustrated Ella, and Hugh Dancy is satisfactorily Hugh Dancy. Also, in an earlier argument, the prince, with exasperation, tells Ella, “It’ll be a lot easier to rescue you if I don’t have to commute.” And the climactic battle has Ella and the prince having a Serious Relationship Talk while fighting off a bunch of knights. That was pretty fun, actually.
Oh, there are also musical numbers. I don’t want to talk about it.
Falling for Grace, 21 February 2021, streamed via Prime Video (Showtime)
Hey, a version with Asian Americans! Huzzah! As our protagonist, Yip Han--who decides to take the name Grace, after Grace Kelly, not knowing Yip Han is the name of the Chinese Cinderella--is from an immigrant family (she’s second generation), we’ve got a pretty standard “torn between two cultures” rom-com going on, with a heaping helping of “racist things white people say.”
At a random cocktail party, she’s mistaken for Grace Tang “of the Shanghai Tangs” and she decides to run with it. (Then they told her she speaks English so well and I almost threw a bottle at my TV.) How insufferable are the rich white people? Well, they throw a GATSBY BALL if that’s any indication.
Gale Harold and Fay Ann Lee
Grace works at an investment company of some sort, her biggest client being clothier Kari Mills. Andrew Barrington, the prince figure, works in the state attorney general’s office, and he’s trying to shut down the Kari Mills sweatshops. Also, her parents work in one of those sweatshops. Also, his father is the banker for Kari Mills. Stuff happens.
Anyway, Grace’s brother Ming, bound for the Culinary Institute, makes asparagus dumplings with duck and cilantro at one point and it’s pretty much all I can think about now.
Year of the Fish, 22 February 2021, DVD
This is the flip side of Falling for Grace, I guess--it’s also centered around Chinatown (though I’m fairly certain star An Nguyen is Vietnamese), but instead of sweatshops, we’ve got, um, a massage parlor. Ye Xian, our Cinderella, immigrates to America via those deals that are pretty much indentured servitude. When she refuses to do any sex work (she thought she was going to work in a beauty salon), she’s relegated to cleaning for the establishment. But, uh, you guys, I know way more than I wanted to know about the inner workings of massage parlors now. I need a brain scrub.
A fortune teller gives her a magical fish. The fish is occasionally our narrator. The madam cooks the fish and then breaks the news Ye Xian’s father back in China has died because she is THE WORST, geez. Anyway, Ye Xian coincidentally meets a jazz musician named Johnny when he rescues her from a gang.
Johnny’s buddy eventually is like, “Uh, I think that girl you like might work at a local brothel.” As you can imagine, it doesn’t go over great--at least until they go to the parlor and look for her, and the madam is like, “She won’t even work with clients! She cleans toilets.” But when Johnny declares his love anyway, the madam has a soliloquy on love being the worst fate. Okay?
The film is digitally rotoscoped, which mostly looks to me like they put an Adobe Photoshop watercolor filter over everything. It’s pretty! And disorienting to watch.
Y’all, this is the weirdest movie.
Rags, 23 February 2021, streamed via CBS All Access
So the gimmick here is that Cinderella is gender-swapped, kind of! Charlie Prince (Max Schneider) is an aspiring musician who apparently plays the ukelele for breakers on the streets of New York. Kadee Worth (Keke Palmer), is an “international pop princess.” (Her label is Majesty Records, GET IT?)
How’s the music, you ask? Well, if Shawn Mendes is a little too rock and roll for you, then this is right up your alley.
Satisfactory meet cute, though: Kadee’s dog slips his leash and it leads to Kadee and Charlie full-on crashing into each other. (Later, he gets a job as a janitor at Majesty Records.) She gives him an invitation to the Majesty Records talent contest masquerade ball (what), and obvs then his vapid stepbrothers take it. A masked Charlie goes anyway and ends up filling in for one of the musical acts. You see where we’re going here, right?
Cinderella (2015), 24 February 2021, streamed via Amazon Video
Seems fair to bookend this with Disney’s live-action take! Though, in a boggling turn of events, this one isn’t on Disney+? WTF?
Watching Cinderella’s mother die of an unnamed disease is like watching Batman’s parents get shot in that alley. How many versions do we really need? But having Cindy’s mom give us the film’s core is nice: “Have courage and be kind.” No wishing at all! How modern! Regardless, I wasn’t able to properly feel sad because I was distracted by the swan chandelier.
Honestly, if I had a chance to marry Cate Blanchett, I’d do it, too. (Someday, sometime, there will be an adaptation where the stepmother has some semblance of humanity aside from the moment she hears about her husband’s death. We get somewhat close with Blanchett’s bitter, “Love is not free.”) Further, Lady Tremaine’s wardrobe is the actual protagonist of this film.
And we have another hunting meet cute! Why does the prince always have to run down Cinderella like she’s his new prey? Then he has the NERVE to pretend to be not a prince! Though she sasses at him quite a bit--this is not a Cinderella who’s accepted the diminishing.
I will say this version of Cinderella is the only one that I felt could flying squirrel tackle her stepfamily at any moment. I dig that. She only really loses it when they rip up her mother’s dress, which is still viscerally upsetting.
Hilariously, Cinderella tells her fairy godmother that fairy godmothers don’t exist, even though her best and only friends are intelligent sentient mice. And then she BLOWS UP the greenhouse making the carriage. MADAM, those might be the only vegetables Cinderella will be allowed to eat for the season! Also, is this really a climate for lizards?
The dress transformation is some straight-up anime nonsense. Also, I’m very unclear on why everybody at the ball thinks Cinderella’s a princess? Like, yeah, that dress is SWANK, but that’s little enough when you’re thinking about actual royal pedigrees. It’s not like they can see the gold carriage from the ballroom.
Anyway, guys, I’m pretty sure Princess Chelina of Zaragosa is also in love with Cinderella. (What did it for me? Cindy paused to tell the king how much his son loves him. What a sweetheart she is.)
I was glad when this movie ended, mostly because I spent much of it worrying about whether Lily James could breathe in that corset.
Okay, the character Cinderella, at her core, isn’t as annoying as I expected. (Have I mixed her up with Aurora? It’s possible.) Certainly, she can be played a bit passive, but I feel like these fourteen (EGADS) were a 50/50 split on backbone. Not bad, really.
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