As a kid, I didn’t see Disney’s Cinderella. My parents did try to take my siblings and I to see as many as came out, but for Cinderella, my dad took us to a small, single-screen theater near our house, where we waited in a very long long that went out the door and around the building. And while we waited, an announcement came that the show was sold out before we got anywhere near the front door. Bottom line is, we didn’t see Cinderella, and though I’d seen many scenes from it in the past, I don’t think I’d seen the whole thing from start to finish.
Well, I do have Disney+ and a lot of “shelter in place” free time on my hands. Why not fill in that gap?
It is worth noting that, like most Grimm Fairy Tales, the story of Cinderella isn’t very long. While a good retelling might be too long for a cartoon short, there also may not be enough material for a feature. The movie, as it is, adds to it with the characters of the mice, especially Jacques and newcomer Gus. The first fifteen to twenty minutes have more to do with the mice going about their comedic business while avoiding Lucifer the cat then it does retelling the story. There’s a little character work for Cinderella herself, but like most Disney heroines from this era, there isn’t much to her aside from the facts she is beautiful and good. So, let’s have some mice doing slapstick while wearing clothes Cinderella made for them in her spare time.
And that’s fine. Cinderella actually works better than a lot of other Disney animated features. Pretty much all of the songs are memorable classics, the supporting cast make for fine characters in their own right, and the animation is top notch. The movies obstacles are the Stepmother is evil and intelligent. Though the woman never says so, it does appear that she figured out who the mystery woman dancing with Prince Charming all night was just from some arched eyebrows. And while her own two daughters are rather horrible people in their own right, the two are also too stupid to be anything more than a vague problem. When they do strike out, it usually comes from their mother’s manipulation more than anything else.
Is there anything more that I can say about Cinderella that someone far better at this than I am hasn’t already said? It’s Cinderella, one of the best animated films Disney has ever created, just as impressive as it’s always been, particularly since the whole thing was drawn by hand over multiple years. Everything about the movie just works. The humor works, the songs work, the animation works, everything works.
Why Disney finds the need to remake these movies, I’ll never know, but I’m not in a rush to see the live-action remake.
Grade: A
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