“Cinderella”: Camila Cabello, Billy Porter’s “queer” fairy godmother and the ubiquitous James Corden
The stories of the cinema of the pandemic, when everything is over and we are only left with the memory of a puncture and Wikipedia is in charge of enclosing the tragedy, they will probably continue to be told. If a few weeks ago we saw the premiere of "Free Guy", one of those 20th Century Fox movies that, for a moment, seemed to be in the limbo of "blockbuster" but finally managed to be released, now it's the turn of "Cinderella" . The film, a new version of the classic tale, stars Cuban-American singer Camila Cabello, and was one of Sony Pictures' big bets before the arrival of the coronavirus. The closure of theaters that accompanied the virus, in addition to putting the health of the entire sector in check, made the entertainment giant reconsider its priorities and the film ended up in the hands of Amazon Studios, which premieres it this Friday, March 3. September through Prime Video and for everyone.
Beyond the technical, which returns to digital platforms a film conceived for the big theaters, the new adaptation of "Cinderella" had been generating a stir since Entertainment Weekly advanced the first details and fueled a controversy as artificial as it is sincere about the times that they run. Billy Porter, the Emmy and Tony Award-winning actor, and Golden Globe nominee for his role in the series “Pose”, would be in charge of giving life to a new version of the Fairy Godmother. At the time, putting all the accents of him: the "queer", the black, the non-conformist, the old-fashioned and the one who is willing to break barriers on the big screen by dressing in a gala dress traditionally associated with women's fashion. It's not as if it hadn't been done before, perhaps forty years before, but never in a context where the very decision could be interpreted (or not) as political.
Cinderella is not so desperate
Be that as it may, “Cinderella” (“Cinderella” in its original English) arrives this week on our favorite screens and devices and does so as a musical with high pretensions and (it seems) a high budget. With the voice of Camila Cabello as the main claim, but with the experience and Broadway brand tables of Idina Menzel (”Frozen) or Nicholas Galitzine (”Young Men and Witches”), the film directed by Kay Cannon (”Pitch Perfect 3″ ) tries to approach the classic story of the half-sister almost abandoned to her fate from a more current perspective, with a clear feminist intention and a claiming message of empowerment that, without revealing anything about the plot and avoiding “spoilers”, distances her in her section end of better-known versions such as the one made by Disney in 1965 and that, somehow, he re-edited in the happy "real action" just over five years ago.
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The elements, we must not deceive ourselves, are the same: a girl exploited in a semi-slavery regime by a stepmother who cares very little, non-canonically beautiful stepsisters who do not care about the latter and a bachelor prince who does not care. there is a way to find a partner to ensure the continuity of the monarchy. The subversiveness of the story, if there is such a word, happens because the Ella ("Cinder Ella") of Cabello does not dream so much of escaping from the reign of terror of her father's widow as of breaking through as an "entrepreneur" of fashion self-made, like a kind of post-medieval Amancio Ortega in which the film places us. Of course, by the time the prince played with an androgynous duality, to be sure, by Galitzine lays eyes on the humble peasant, swearing that nothing will come between her and her dreams of her haute couture.
A great episode of "Glee"
Moving away from the plot, which is appropriate, and approaching the musical, which is less appealing, Amazon's “Cinderella” could be defined as the episode with the highest budget in the history of “Glee”. The musical series created by Ryan Murphy, Ian Brennan and Brad Falchuk, which delighted the demographic before Cabello and her exes, the Fifth Harmony, does not seem so much an inspiration as an architectural blueprint on which to spin the film. Numbers such as “Somebody To Love”, by Queen, or anyone who stars that wonder of nature that is Idina Menzel immediately remind us of the musical outrages committed by Rachel, Finn and all the other students of the McKinley Institute.
Without any "cover" or any song to destroy, perhaps the appearance of Billy Porter as Fairy Godmother is the greatest success of a production that not only steals from "Glee", but is also not afraid of borrowing the rhythms and the rap of "Hamilton", by Lin-Manuel Miranda, or the uchronies of "The Bridgertons", although there may also be a small victory there, for removing the layer of dandruff that does abound in the Shonda Rhimes series for Netflix. Porter, who likes each sentence he releases decked out in bright orange, barely delights us with his presence for 5 minutes to leave us with the honey on the lips of what he could have been. Luckily, there will be no one who asks for historical or racial rigor from a being who is capable of turning a mouse into James Corden.
The most hated Briton in Hollywood, at least since it was discovered that he secretly tried to lower his screenwriters' salaries and invaded the cars of some frightened drivers in Los Angeles, reappears in his umpteenth musical, who knows if to ensure the guests then on his show, and he also puts money out of his own pocket, as a producer, into a series of cameos that become long, tedious and unnecessary. The footage, which gives us two very generous hours, not only seems long from the moment in which the less flashy recent pop (of course, from the Sony Music catalogue) begins to ring in our ears, but it also seems to challenge the viewer's attention at times, as if wanting to create a culture of "mash-up" and returning to the times, once again, of "Glee" and Professor Schuester.
