Cinderella walks a fine line between heartfelt and ridiculous, and mostly gets it right. Ella’s (Cabello) dreams to open her own dress shop are real. She wants to create and charter her own life, to not be dependent on others. It’s a relatable and modern character motivation and grounds the film from start to finish. She’s also incredibly sweet, awkward, and optimistic despite the circumstances she finds herself in; a combination that works and makes you cheer for her from start to finish. But Ella isn’t the only character whose dreams are respected. Cinderella is a story that usually doesn’t have anything nice to say about most of its supporting characters. Here, however, stepmother Vivian (Menzel), Queen Beatrice’s (Minnie Driver), and even Princess Gwen (Tallulah Greive) and the stepsisters have dreams that defy expectations and are real at heart. And it’s easy to connect to any of these characters because, as women, we face challenges on the daily based on the bodies we were born in. By giving viewers multiple female characters with different dreams, this modern adaptation avoids some of the pitfalls of the original story. Bring that all together and Cinderella is a movie worth watching. It has the feel-good elements of a romance, the timing of a comedy, the noteworthy singing of a musical, and the kind of dream that feels inspiring—the kind of message that viewers may particularly be searching for in 2021.
