This may seriously aggravate some people, but this may have been one of the worst films I have ever seen. The entire film, from beginning to end, is terribly flawed. Everything from the casting to the music was subpar to say the very least. I struggled to find one thing about the film that I actually enjoyed. I thought the casting choices were quite terrible; I thought that Brandy Norwood in particular was a horrid choice as her acting was atrocious. Not only do I believe that she is a terrible singer, but I felt that her speaking voice was annoying as well (her voice seemed so forced and fake). While Whitney Houston is not a fantastic actor, she certainly did a far better job than Brandy--who should have probably stolen the show as the lead character. Jason Alexander, who I typically enjoy in films, did a subpar job of performing a French accent. While I appreciate the fact that he is meant to have a French accent, as the story takes place in France, I feel that the film would have been better off eliminating the accent completely as it seemed to flicker on and off as the film progressed. On top the the lackluster acting, the film as a whole was terribly confusing. I truly understand that one of the goals of this film was to break boundaries and move forward in a direction that most Disney films had never gone before. One of the ways that Robert Iscove and the casting directors attempted to do this was by including a cast that was very racially diverse. While I by no means have a problem with this (and I hope that I don’t come off as sounding like I do), I found it terribly annoying that a Caucasian king and an African-American queen somehow managed to produce a son of Asian decent. Also, I felt that the only reason in which Natalie Desselle Reid was cast as Minerva was to make the film appear less racist (having three white women boss around an African-American woman may have come off as a bit racist). The songs in this film were uncharacteristically poor for a Disney film (especially considering the fact that Whitney Houston and Brandy Norwood are so highly regarded in musical circles). I truly struggled to get through this film. The only thing that helped to keep my attention throughout the course of the film was how corny it was; it was actually so corny that I laughed out loud on multiple occasions. The story of Cinderella isn’t exactly my favorite story that Disney has ever told, however, the fact that they changed the prince’s name from “Charming” to “Chris” is absolutely ridiculous and it annoys me to no end. I had never seen this film in its entirety before, but my expectations were that it would be better than the 1950, animated version of Cinderella; I was incredibly wrong. https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0128996/?ref_=m_ttep_ep_ep7
Comments