Cinderella

Let’s start with what you truly care about.

The new Frozen short film, Frozen Fever, plays before showings of Cinderella, and that’s the best reason to buy a ticket!

Frozen Fever is not so much a short film, but a music video as we watch Elsa (Idina Menzel) preparing a huge birthday party for Anna (Kristen Bell), with some help from Olaf (Josh Gaad), Kristoff (Jonathan Groff) and more. Yet, poor Elsa is coming down with a cold, which causes some grief of its own.

While the big song, Making Today A Perfect Day, is not on the level of Let It Go (not much is), Frozen Fever is a tasty little treat to keep the kids and adults happy until we get Frozen 2. Olaf is up to some silly antics, Anna and Elsa keep the sisterly love alive, and kids get to giggle as we see what happens when Elsa sneezes and starts to fight off the sickness.

As far as Cinderella goes, I am shocked it wasn’t dreadful!

Lily James stars as Cinderella – a young lady who has the perfect, idyllic life with a loving mother(Haley Atwell) and father (Ben Chaplin), until tragedy strikes.

When Mom passes away, Dad marries an evil Stepmother (Cate Blanchett) who never warms to cute Cinderella, and the relationship goes further downhill when Dad passes away, and Cinderella ends up being treated like a servant in her own house.

You know the rest of the story, right?

That’s the only real problem with Cinderella. Director Kenneth Branagh and writer Chris Weitz excel at telling the story of how Cinderella becomes Cinderella, but don’t do much to energize the old, familiar part of the tale beyond some amazing visuals and leaning heavily on the strong cast.

It all looks amazing, and Branagh wonderfully creates a tone that feels refreshingly traditional without becoming too saccharine. You will be happy to hear Cinderella doesn’t start to ride a skateboard, break out into a Taylor Swift-inspired song and dance number, or some other clichéd Hollywood trope to make it feel “modern”.

It screams MAGICAL!

It’s old-fashioned in the right ways, just like James is Cinderella in all of the right ways.

James fills our heroine with a warm love and innocence that is far from naïve. She is radiant on screen both in look and attitude as the entire audience is charmed by her optimism and bravery in the face of insurmountable odds and a wickedly, slyly evil stepmother as played by Blanchett.

While James is kindness incarnate, Blanchett is the walking evil with a coldness that is more striking than any tantrum or verbal explosion could ever impact the audience.

Sophie McShera and Holliday Grainger are delightfully bratty and comical as the stepsisters, Drisella and Anastasia, but Richard Madden is stuck with the thankless task of portraying the pretty Prince Kit, who doesn’t do much but look pretty (ultimately, this prince wants major kudos for inheriting Dad’s multi-zillion dollar business/empire and marrying the most gorgeous woman in all of the land, instead of inheriting Dad’s multi-zillion dollar business/empire and marrying an equally gorgeous princess who inherited Dad’s multi-zillion dollar business/empire, what’s the sacrifice again?).

Cinderella loses steam as we watch Prince Kit and Cinderella finding love at The Ball and the subsequent search to find the owner of the Glass Slipper, but Branagh and Weitz toss in a few nuggets along the way to keep the audience interested, even though we know how it will all end (SPOILER ALERT: The shoe fits).

Cinderella is rated PG for mild thematic elements.