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Cinderella, review: hashtag awkward for this modern spin on Cinders

Camila Cabello and cast in Cinderella - Kerry Brown/Amazon
Camila Cabello and cast in Cinderella - Kerry Brown/Amazon
  • PG cert, 113 min. Dir: Kay Cannon

We have James Corden to thank for this. The unfathomably popular TV host decided we needed yet another “modern spin” on Cinderella, and – God help us – he also joins the cast as a mouse-turned-footman who’s obsessed with how his new human body pees. That’s the sophistication level of this anodyne movie-musical, which hits you over the head with Instagram-ready empowerment platitudes, while delivering a soulless capitalist fairy-tale.

Here, Cinderella dreams of becoming a fashion designer, but women aren’t allowed to work in her patriarchal society – which, confusingly, has medieval dress but modern speech and woke grandstanding. The stepmother isn’t evil; she’s a hard-line pragmatist who knows her girls need to marry well.

However, both Cinderella and Prince Robert have a bad case of “The world doesn’t understand me!” adolescent angst. They want to make their own choices, even if the prince’s ambitions so far amount to drunken hunting trips with his mates. As he moans about his hereditary privilege, his younger sister comes up with ideas of how to actually run the kingdom.

But while writer-director Kay Cannon’s script is exhaustingly preachy, hers is an elitist, superficial girl-boss feminism. Never mind challenging the system that everyone says is problematic, as long as a few individuals can thrive within in it – and make money.

Pop star Camila Cabello makes a decent acting debut, bringing warmth to the thinly written protagonist. But her Cinderella never really faces any jeopardy. Nor does Cabello have much chemistry with Nicholas Galitzine’s dim prince.

Camila Cabello makes a decent acting debut in the otherwise poor Cinderella - Kerry Brown/Amazon
Camila Cabello makes a decent acting debut in the otherwise poor Cinderella - Kerry Brown/Amazon

Pierce Brosnan and Minnie Driver are under-used as the grumpy king and indulgent queen who have fallen out of love – although at least Brosnan, so memorably dreadful in Mamma Mia!, keeps his singing to a minimum. Billy Porter’s gender-bending fairy godmother is reduced to a camp cheerleader, screeching “Yasss, future Queen!” at a transformed Cinderella.

The jukebox score is also painfully literal. The prince, who wants somebody to love, croons Somebody to Love, and the materialistic stepmother sings Material Girl. It’s in the vein of Baz Luhrmann’s Moulin Rouge!, but sadly lacks his zany choices, wit and sheer excess – and the underlying emotion.

Pierce Brosnan and Minnie Driver in Cinderella - Kerry Brown/Amazon
Pierce Brosnan and Minnie Driver in Cinderella - Kerry Brown/Amazon

Even the original track Million to One, Cinderella’s big ballad, sounds dispiritingly generic. Everything has an autotuned gloss, and the numbers fail to build or to reveal anything about the characters’ inner lives – not helped by the choppy cutting, which feels like an embarrassing bid to get in with the TikTok crowd. There’s also a town crier who raps – hashtag awkward.

Despite the strenuous effort, this glass slipper just doesn’t fit.

On Amazon Prime from September 3