Cinderella (2021)

On September 3, Amazon released a new Cinderella movie on their Prime service. Since it’s release, it has gotten some pretty terrible reviews. But did the movie really deserve all of the hate? Well, I watched the movie just for you…so let’s find out.

The story has the basics of the standard Cinderella story - orphan Ella lives in the basement and serves her stepmother and stepsisters. She catches the eye of the prince, who is in need of a bride. With some help from a magical godmother, she attends a ball, where the prince falls in love with her. At midnight, she runs away, leaving a shoe behind. The prince searches the kingdom for his new love. Happily ever after,

However, this version gives us a slightly feminist slant to the story. There is an underlying plot of how women are basically considered second-class. Ella dreams of owning a dress shop but she is told multiple times that women can’t run a business, Princess Gwen has tons of brilliant ideas for updates to the kingdom but her father constantly tells her to shut up, and even Queen Beatrice is talked down to by her husband when she speaks up on her son’s behalf. There are so many instances of misogyny that it almost becomes the main plot of the film. I don’t know that it is a bad thing. It is a little overbearing though.

The main thing I want to talk about is the music. In this world, people break out into song for little to no reason. And, yes, everyone around them can hear them. Or at least they can most of the time. The problem is the song choice. This movie was written and directed by Kay Cannon, who also wrote all three Pitch Perfect movies, and it shows. She has Prince Robert sing “Somebody To Love,” which fits well in Ella Enchanted, another Cinderella movie. Here, though, Robert looks utterly stupid singing about how hard he works. Yes, I know it is supposed to be sarcastic but it just doesn’t work. Heck, the movie STARTS OUT with the village singing Janet Jackson’s “Rhythm Nation” mixed with “You Gotta Be” by Des’ree. It is not good. And it just doesn’t stop. It seems like there is another song every ten minutes. (Please note that it is a 2-hour long movie.)

Despite all of the terrible reviews, there is a good movie hidden in here. If they made this a straight romantic comedy instead of a jukebox musical, I think this would have been a fantastic film. While Camila Cabello does a decent job with Ella, the prize winners here are the women of the royal family. Minnie Driver as Queen Beatrice is pure gold. Pierce Brosnan’s King Rowan would have died in his first scene thanks to the daggers from her eyeballs. Tallulah Greive’s Princess Gwen doesn’t get a lot of screen time but she kills every scene she is in. The only other character that I enjoyed was Prince Robert’s…Scottish friend? I don’t think they even gave the poor guy a name but he is awesome.

Should you watch it? No…I don’t think you should. While the “movie” parts aren’t that bad, there are so many absolutely awful songs that they make it difficult to enjoy the good parts. Go watch Ella Enchanted (on Amazon Prime) or the 1997 Rogers & Hammerstein Cinderella with Brandy (on Disney Plus). You would be much happier with those choices.

PS: Please stop letting James Corden run rampant all over your movie. I understand wanting to cast him because people know his name. But there is NO reason to keep cutting to him every few minutes. It did NOTHING for the story besides annoy your viewers. He isn’t worth it.

LuLaRich - Reviewing The Amazon Docuseries

Halloween reviews start on October 1!

Unless you have been living under a rock, I’m sure you have heard of LuLaRoe. You know, those are the “buttery soft” leggings that “fashionable” moms everywhere wear. The company skyrocketed to popularity only to fall from grace amid scandal. Well, the people that brought us the Hulu documentary, Fyre Fraud, have given us LuLaRich, a four-part docuseries on Amazon Prime, to show us all the gritty details behind the shady company.

In case you aren’t aware of the issues surrounding LuLaRoe, here is a not-so-quick synopsis. The company started with DeAnne Brady selling maxi skirts, that she sewed at home, out of the trunk of her car. When she became overloaded with sales, she recruited some of her friends to help sell the clothes. As the company grew, more consultants signed on and the company began to form a tiered (or may I say, pyramid) ranking of these consultants. The top tiers would make a commission based on the sales of their lower tiers and so on. (Obviously the bottom tier didn’t have commissions as there was no tier under them.) Those top tiers would rake in tens of thousands of dollars per month. I believe some of the top tier consultants got monthly checks for $70,000 or more. While multi-level marketing (MLMs) are not illegal, pyramid schemes are. And this, my friends, is a pyramid scheme.

The issues really started when LuLaRoe had more consultants than an area could handle. It became difficult for consultants to sell their products because there was so much competition. In addition, the quality of the clothing started to go down. Leggings, their highest selling product by far, would arrive smelling bad or have holds in them or the patterns were sewn badly, resulting in the infamous Tower of Pisa leggings or other almost-x-rated patterns.

Eventually, consultants began leaving en masse. LuLaRoe, in an attempt to keep all of their profits, refused to honor the 100% refund they promised their consultants. Bring on the lawsuits!

How does the docuseries do telling this story? Eh. If you already know the story of the company, the series will probably bore you. There are some interviews with Brady and her husband, Mark Stidham, as well as some former employees. We haven’t heard a lot from the people involved with the actual corporation. Those parts are interesting. However, there are a lot of interviews with the very vocal consultants that were in the top tiers before they left the company. I would have preferred to hear more from the people in the lower tiers that lost everything and barely made any money. I don’t have a lot of sympathy for people who raked in tens of thousands of dollars each month on the backs of other people’s work then sob when their expensive sports cars are repossessed.

Each episode is roughly 45 minutes. If you are interesting in hearing more about the terrible things DeAnne and the company did (trust me, I only scratched the surface), it is worth the watch. However, if you are already familiar with the basics of the story, you would probably do better watching the video Vice put out in 2019.

I write about more than just Christmas movies. Seriously.

For the past three years, I have reviewed Christmas movies. I tend to get so burned out on them that I don’t know what to write about the rest of the year.

In an attempt to fix my Big Time Writer’s Block, I am going to expand the holiday movie reviews this year. Yes, I will still do the Christmas movies. But this time I am going to add Halloween to the schedule. I am going to review Halloween-related movies released in 2021.

Now - the Christmas movies usually have to follow some rules. The big rule is they have to be first released in the year they are being reviewed (no reviewing 2012 movies in 2021). The Halloween movies will follow that same rule. In 2018 and 2019, I only reviewed movies released in December. In 2020, I moved that to every movie released for the Christmas season, which started in November. While I would like to stick to movies released in October, I might not have enough movies to fill the entire month. There are some scary movies that either have already been released or will be released in the next few weeks. So don’t be surprised if you see some September releases in the October reviews.

Another addition is series. There are a few series that have popped up on the Halloween release schedule for 2021. I don’t normally review series as it can take me awhile to power through them. But I think there are a couple of 8-episode series that I could kick out pretty quickly. I haven’t committed myself to watching the series yet. We’ll see how that goes when they actually come out.

I am interested to see how the Halloween movies match up to the Christmas movies. I don’t particularly like slasher films but, then again, I don’t like cheesy love movies either. I really am a glutton for punishment, aren’t I?