It’s been a rough pandemic year for the Pixar Animation studios.  The Emeryville, California based animation giant has set a high bar for the industry over the past quarter century, and 2020 was set to be a big year for them.  They had two highly anticipated animated features lined up that were set to continue their hot streak at the box office.  The first of the two, Onward, made it to cinemas in early March of 2020.  And then the whole world came crashing down.  Movie theaters were shut for an indeterminable amount of time, which would end up being over a year in the end, and every movie playing immediately before the shut down suddenly had their box office returns cut short.  Onward, the last major studio film released before the shutdown, wound up with the lowest box office totals of any Pixar movie to date, but it was clear that it was not the films fault.  Like everything else in the 14 months that followed, Hollywood had to gauge a whole new way to measure success under the new pandemic affected conditions.  Would Onward had performed better if the pandemic hadn’t gotten in the way?  We’ll never know.  However, once the pandemic hit, parent company Disney made the controversial decision to accelerate Onward’s  streaming debut on Disney+, foregoing the usual 3 month exclusive theatrical window, just so that people who missed out on seeing it in the theater would have a chance to watch it at home.  Though the movie theaters were worried that this would change the dynamic of the exhibition market, they at the same time had little say in the matter.  Onward made it’s debut and for all accounts it performed well enough for Disney to do the same with a couple other films waiting in the wings.  Frozen II (2019) and Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (2019) saw their streaming premieres also accelerated, though they benefitted from full box office performances beforehand.  And movies that Disney didn’t mind skipping theaters all together with (Artemis Fowl and The One and Only Ivan) were also brought directly to Disney+.  But the question remained, what was Disney going to do with the other highly anticipated Pixar animated film for the year 2020; that being the Pete Doctor-directed Soul.

Soul was undoubtedly the more ambitious of the two 2020 movies, dealing with heavier themes than Onward and with a more ethereal canvas of design and concept.  It’s also clear having seen it that Soul was a movie made for the big screen, with it’s widescreen presentation and ambitious scale.  But, with the pandemic shutdowns extending well beyond what anyone thought was possible, Disney and Pixar needed to make a hard choice.  Do they continue to keep pushing Soul back on the calendar, or do they skip theaters all together.  Soul did move a couple times off it’s original June 2020 release date.  It first landed in late August, and then again moving to Thanksgiving weekend.  With theaters still closed all the way to the holidays, Pixar ultimately made the tough choice to put Soul out exclusively on Disney+, without a premium fee to offset lost box office.  It was determined that Disney would benefit with the extra boost in subscriptions by having a Pixar title premiere on their platform, and given the previous success over the year with other premieres, and the fact that any more delays would work against other movies in the pipeline, the tough choice had to be made.  It must had been hard especially for Pixar head Pete Doctor, since Soul was his own baby.  But, despite missing out in theaters, Soul still found it’s audience, and led to Doctor winning a record third Oscar for Best Animated Feature.  But, the precedent set by putting Soul out on streaming led to Disney feeling more comfortable with the model, and it was announced soon after that the next Pixar movie in line, Luca, would also be skipping a theatrical release in favor of streaming.  This left a lot of people at Pixar rightfully upset, especially by the fact that it was not getting the hybrid streaming/theatrical release that Disney’s own Raya and the Last Dragon received.  And with movie theaters finally reopening, and showing signs of a quick recovery, it seemed like Disney was making a shortsighted choice, robbing a movie that would play magnificently on the big screen a chance to prove itself.  But, as it stands, Luca is making it’s debut this weekend in living rooms across the world rather than the cinema, and now we can determine for ourselves whether or not Disney’s choice was a sound one or the wrong one.

Luca takes place on the picturesque Italian Riviera, near and within a small little fishing village called Portorusso.  Unbeknownst to the fishermen who sail the coastline of the their village, there is a whole other community beneath the waves; one made entirely of sea monsters.  In this community, we find Luca Paguro (Jacob Tremblay), a timid young sea monster who is afraid of what lies beyond the water’s surface.  However, curiosity leads him to discover a bunch of artifacts from the human world, which he discovers are being collected by another young sea monster named Alberto Scorfano (Jack Dylan Grazer).  To Luca’s surprise and amazement, he watches Alberto carefreeingly leaving the ocean and walking on land.  Alberto forces Luca up with him and the newcomer soon discovers that his scale-ly skin transforms on land to human like skin when it’s dry.  Alberto helps Luca learn more about the human world and the two form a friendship, though it’s kept secret from Luca’s protective mother Daniela (Maya Rudolph) and father Lorenzo (Jim Gaffigan).  When Luca’s parents learn of his deception and threaten to send him to live with his deep sea Uncle Ugo (Sacha Baron Cohen), Luca runs away and convinces Alberto that they should pursue their shared dream; riding across the world on a Vespa scooter.  They make their way to Portorusso, in the hopes of getting a Vespa of their own.  There they meet a young human girl named  Giulia (Emma Berman), who is obsessed with winning the Portorusso Cup challenge, especially if it means besting the town bully, Ercole Visconti (Servio Raimondo).  Giulia takes the two in with the hopes of helping them train as a team.  At Giulia’s home, they meet her father Massimo, a one-armed fisherman and cook who’s got his eye on slaying the rumored sea monsters in the area, as does his suspecting cat Machiavelli, whose got his keen eye on the two outsiders.  Meanwhile Daniela and Lorenzo search the town for their lost son.  For Luca and Alberto, the challenge becomes whether or not they can keep their secret safe and achieve their dream in the human world, and more crucially, can they keep themselves dry in a town where water is literally all around them.

Regardless of how it makes it’s way to the audience, there is no doubt that the bar is always high when it comes to Pixar.  They are one of the standard bearers in Animation, in a class that is only matched with sister studio Disney and few others; possibly smaller players like Laika and Studio Ghibli.  Especially coming off the heals of a beloved movie like Soul, there is a lot of expectations about what Pixar can bring to the table next with a movie like Luca.  So it is with great relief that Pixar not only clears the high bar with Luca, it does so in spectacular fashion.  Luca is an all around triumph from beginning to end.  The movie was directed by Enrico Casarosa, a long time story artist at Pixar making his directorial debut.  Luca clearly is a love letter to the director’s native homeland, where he spent his childhood growing up in the coastal city of Genoa on Italy’s majestic Portofino coastline.  Though not the first time that Pixar has infused such a cultural presence into one of their stories (see also 2012’s Brave and 2017’s Coco), Luca takes on an especially personal touch, with so much attention to detail put into the world of this story.  The movie is set in a particular time and place, that being Italy in the late 50’s and early 60’s, which I’m sure is a very intentional choice on Casarosa’s part.  The movie is heavily inspired by Italian New Wave cinema, and in particular, the movies of Federico Fellini.  You can feel the influence of Fellini throughout the movie, from the colorful characters to the lush coastal setting, to even the music choices.  Casarosa even throws in some charming Easter eggs for cinephiles out there, like movie posters for Roman Holiday (1953) and La Starda (1953) plastered on the walls.  Other cinematic influences are plentiful as well, like Machiavelli the Cat who I swear is designed exactly to be nod to the animation style of Hayao Miyazaki.  Suffice to say, the movie is a feast for the senses in the best way that Pixar knows how to do.

But on top of that, it also features a wonderful story built upon an intriguing concept.  Essentially, it’s a story about breaking free of barriers, both internal and external.  Luca begins his journey unaware of the larger world around, and the potential for adventures that he may have.  One of the crucial things that he picks up with his experiences with Alberto is to push against those inhibitions that cause him to be fearful of the world.  In a funny explanation, Alberto calls that inner voice that tells Luca “no” about everything Bruno, and he instructs Luca to repeat to himself, “Silencio Bruno” as a way of moving past his fears.  Over time, “Silencio Bruno” becomes a mantra for the two boys and it enables them to grow bolder over the course of the movie.  It’s a very uplifting element to the story, and as we see, Luca is far more brave than he ever thought he would be, which enables him to move beyond the limits that others have forced upon him.  Though Enrico Casarossa insists it was never intended this in his original story, and perhaps it might be my own self reading too much into the movie as well, but I sensed a subtle queer subtext in Luca’s story.  Trust me, the friendship between Luca and Alberto is strictly platonic, but there is something very familiar in how both of the boys overcome societies barriers in order to find acceptance for who they really are, especially in a town that views them first and foremost as monsters.  It’s also a story about Luca discovery his true self by finding friends who encourage his adventurous side, and help him to break free from a sheltered life where he might not have known what he was really capable of.  To many LGBTQ people in the audience, this will ring true with many coming out journeys that each of them have had.  Though it wasn’t intended to be the message, I still think Pixar wouldn’t dismiss such a reading either, as Disney has at times leaned into the many different queer readings of their own films like The Little Mermaid (1989) or Frozen (2013), without ever discouraging it.  It’s not quite a PG-rated  Call Me By Your Name (2017), but I think there might be something worthwhile there that many queer people, especially the youngest one, will find uplifting in Luca’s story.

The movie’s characters are also uniformly excellent.  Luca is an especially endearing lead, as his curiosity to discover new things is delightfully entertaining.  Jacob Tremblay brings an especially exuberant vocal performance to the character, bringing out all the different angles of the character in a joyful, heartwarming way.  He deftly manages to capture Luca’s timidness perfectly early one and as he grows more bolder, we feel that growth within the character  through that performance.  His vocal work is also equally matched by Jack Dylan Grazer’s Alberto, where he perfectly embodies that identity of that kind of older “bad influence” kid that we all know.  Like Jacob, Jack also perfectly finds that fully fleshed out character inside, managing to make the character hilarious but also vulnerable when he needs to be.  Emma Berman’s Giulia rounds out the trio with a wonderfully exuberant performance as well.  I especially like how she slips into Italian frequently whenever she grows frustrated, like she’s using it as a substitute for cursing.  Her tomboyish personality really works well off of the personalities of Luca and Alberto, especially with the fact that the two often don’t know how to respond around her sometimes  unexpected personality quirks.  The always reliable Maya Rudolph is perfect here in the role of the mother, and Jim Gaffigan is hilariously subdued in his role as the father.  We also get a quick but hilariously demented cameo from Sacha Baron Cohen as Luca’s bottom feeding Uncle.  If the movie has a weak link, it’s the villainous Ercole, who in many ways is just an afterthought in the story, as the filmmakers believed that the movie needed a more definable antagonist.  He’s serviceable, but not much else; a far cry from some of Pixar’s more memorable baddies like Syndrome from The Incredibles (2004) and Lotso from Toy Story 3 (2010).  I also want to specially point out the cat Machiavelli, who is a straight-up scene stealer in Luca.  Some of the biggest laughs I had were the glaring stares he gives to Luca and Alberto in the movie.  Overall, another beautiful cast of characters to add to the growing Pixar family.

It should also be said that this is one of the most absolutely beautiful movies that Pixar has ever made, and that’s saying a lot.  The real life influence of the Italian coastal setting was no doubt instrumental in creating the world of this film.  It evokes a definitive time and place, but also imbues it with a storybook like feel.  That is also true with the designs of the characters as well.  These character models are far more stylized that what we see with most Pixar characters.  The character’s features are fare less contoured and more rounded out, with Luca’s head almost taking on a tomato-like shape.  It perfectly mixes with the different designs that Luca and Alberto go through as they transform between sea creature and human, allowing the audience to never get confused about who they are seeing on screen at any time.  I also like that the quirky character designs extend to the humans as well, like they are pulled out of a story book as well.  The way that everyone is animated is also more cartoonish and stylized than the average Pixar movie, which more often tries to go for realism in their character movement.  Even so, this movie is still unmistakably Pixar to it’s very core.  You’ll especially find it in how they still manage to convey deep emotion, even through the exaggerated character models.  Though it doesn’t quite tug on the heartstrings as hard as say Up (2009) or Coco (2017), there are still some beautifully emotional moments in this movie, especially in the closing moments.  It may not be a tear-jerker, but it will make you feel especially warm inside as you see the characters find their place in the larger world, and in some cases, find that they must leave something behind.  It pretty much delivers everything that you want from a Pixar movie, but it does so in a way you don’t quite expect.  I wouldn’t be surprised if more Pixar movies in the future adopt a more stylized look like what we see in Luca, because this movie certainly showed that the studio can still deliver no matter how much one of their movies breaks the mold.

I certainly feel like Luca stands as one of the better Pixar movies overall.  It may not be in the top flight, but it is certainly not far behind and many lightyears beyond what most other studios are making.  It just really saddens me that most people are not going to be enjoying this movie on a big screen, which it should honestly be playing on right now.  Living in Los Angeles, I fortunately managed to see it the right way as one, and only one, theater in town has this playing on a big screen; that being the historic El Capitan on Hollywood Boulevard (owned and operated by Disney, of course).  Seeing the movie that way probably helped me to appreciate the movie even more, and it is absolutely worth the effort if you live near Hollywood and there are still tickets available for it’s lone, single week engagement.  For anyone else, please watch this movie on the largest television that you have.  Watching it on anything smaller or handheld will really rob you of the majesty of this beautiful film.  It’s just too bad that a worthy animated movie like Luca is being relegated to streaming while a mediocre film like Dreamworks’ Spirit Untamed is getting a wide theatrical release.  Yeah, sure, Spirit’s lackluster box office is not something to instill confidence on a box office that is still in recovery mode.  But had Luca been given a shot, it might have ignited the box office in ways that other movies have failed to.  This may end up being a tale of a missed opportunity on Pixar’s part, and I hope that this is not the preferred mode of release for all Pixar movies moving forward.  It was a hard pill to swallow for Soul too, but the conditions were understandable.  It makes less sense now as times are changing, and Disney has already proven success with movies already released through their hybrid model like Raya and Cruella (2021).  In any case, Luca should not be missed.  It’s another triumphant original for the legendary studio, with a heartwarming story, which may also resonate with subtly with LGBTQ audiences who recognize a coming out story when they see one, even if it’s young sea monsters leaving the ocean instead of a closet.  Regardless of it’s intended message, it’s a beautifully constructed crowd pleaser that everyone should see.  And given that it’s about venturing outside of the comforts of a sheltered life, it’s a story that gives us more hope in a post pandemic world.  Without a doubt, a certifiable win for Pixar and a movie that deserves more than the circumstances it’s been given.  Silencio Bruno!!!

Rating: 9/10

It’s amazing to think how much the stage musical has had in forming the soundtrack of our culture over the last century.  You may be listening to or singing a song that is omnipresent in our everyday lives, and not even know that it had it’s beginnings on Broadway.  For many years, musical theater was the premiere form of entertainment until cinema came along.  After the advent of the talking picture, musicals found a new venue, and it wasn’t long before Hollywood began pooling in talent who normally would be writing music for the stage.  But, Broadway didn’t dissipate in the face of this change.  Instead, it evolved and became even more ambitious over the years.  And after a while, Hollywood began to take notice and spent millions to bring these blockbuster musicals to the big screen.  These lavish musicals brought out the best in Hollywood, as it turned out to be a good way to promote these new technological advancements like stereo sound and widescreen.  Through the 50’s and 60’s, it became a symbiotic relationship between these two coastal powers; Broadway would produce a certified hit on the stage and then Hollywood would bring it further to the masses on the big screen.  And it propelled the people who made these musicals for the stage into household names: Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, Rodgers and Hammerstein, Lerner & Lowe, Stephen Sondheim, Tim Rice, Andrew Lloyd Webber, and many more.  Though the musical is resilient, it nevertheless has gone through many changes in order to survive the varying shifts in the culture.  Sometimes that even includes compromising between art and commerce, such as favoring something with a built in audience over something experimental for investment.  This has been the case when we see musicals brought to the stage that are either based on an already established franchise or are delivered by a major studio like Disney or Universal instead of an independent theater troupe.  But still, each generation does see a gamechanger rise out of the industry and pushes the artform to a whole different level.  And that man of the moment for the Broadway musical today happens to be a multi-talented performer named Lin-Manuel Miranda.

New York City native Miranda was raised in the shadow of Broadway all of his life and he’s certainly brought a lot of his own upbringing into his work.  The son of Puerto Rican Americans who emigrated from one island to another, he was raised in a culturally diverse setting that exposed him to a variety of sounds that he would over time fuse together in very interesting ways.  He was schooled in the melodies of the latin beat, hip hop, rap, and yes of course, Broadway show tunes.  And being the unashamed nerd that he is proud to proclaim he is, he even cites stuff like Star Wars and Saturday morning cartoons as inspirations for his art.  And all of it has made him one of the most exciting and innovate voices in the world of theater in a generation.  Thus far, he has written and starred only two musicals for the Broadway stage, but both have been blockbuster hits, making him two for two for Best Musical at the Tony Awards.  The latter of the two, Hamilton, in particular has been the show that has turned him into a household name.  It’s ingenious mix of music styles (with a strong emphasis on hip hop) infused into a story about the American Revolution, and in particular it’s central figure of founding father Alexander Hamilton, just blew everyone away when it first premiered on Broadway in 2015.  And even six years after it’s premiere, it is still a high in demand show, with post-Covid return dates already selling out fast.  Miranda, of course, has not slowed down since.  He immediately launched into a successful transition into Hollywood, gaining a strong collaborative relationship with Disney, writing new songs and even appearing on screen in stuff like Mary Poppins Returns (2018).  And just this year, he’s got a whole bunch of new projects lined up, including his directorial debut, Tick, Tick…Boom (2021) for Netflix, as well as musical scores for two animated films, Vivo for Sony Animation and Encanto for Disney.  But, what is eagerly anticipated right now is a big screen adaptation of the first musical that put him on the map, long before Hamilton.  It’s the semi-autobiographical In the Heights, and people are eager to see if Lin-Manuel Miranda can successfully bring something he made for the stage to the big screen without it loosing any of it’s original charm.

Like Miranda’s own life story, In the Heights is a story about the people who live in the closely knit neighborhood of Washington Heights.  The Heights as they call them sits at the very northern tip of the Island of Manhattan, across the Harlem River from the Bronx, and it has always been a traditionally immigrant neighborhood in New York City.  In the few square blocks of the Heights, you’ll find people who have emmigrated from or are descendents of people from all over Latin America; Puerto Ricans, Cubans, Dominicans, Mexicans, etc., all hoping to achieve a piece of the American dream.  But despite all the differences between them, the community acts like a family, all looking out for each other.  At it’s heart is Usnavi (Anthony Ramos) a bodega merchant whose store is a hub of activity for the neighborhood.  His clientele, and extended quasi-family, includes his friend Benny (Corey Hawkins), a dispatcher for a local cab company; Mr. Rosario (Jimmy Smitts), Benny’s boss and father of Benny’s crush, Nina (Leslie Grace), who has returned home from attending college at Stanford; the salon girls Daniela, Carla and Cuca (Daphne Rubin-Vega, Stephanie Beritz, and Dascha Polanco) who work with Vanessa (Melissa Barrera), who Usnavi has a crush on; and finally, “Abuela” Claudia (Olga Merediz) the neighborhood’s adopted matriarch.  Though each of them are there for each other, the characters also have their dreams of moving beyond their hard-knock lives in a neighborhood that is increasingly starting to price them out through gentrification.  For Usnavi, he is right on the verge of making his dream come true.  He’s secured a lease on the old bar that his father used to run in the Dominican Republic in the hopes of revitalizing it and upholding the legacy his family had to put on hold in order to live in America.  Within a matter of days, he’s moving out of the neighborhood and leaving the Heights behind.  But a confluence of events with the people he loves and lives around makes him start to question his future.  By the end, he must decide if El Suenito (or “Little Dream”) is more important to him than what he leaves behind in the Heights itself.

When watching In the Heights, you can definitely see the beginnings of what Lin-Manuel Miranda would later build upon in Hamilton.  His mix of traditional Broadway and hip hop is a style that is uniquely him, and it’s definitely a major part of the musical make-up of In the Heights.  The movie version of this releasing this year is certainly a wealth of riches for any Miranda fan out there, but it is interesting that it wasn’t originally set to release so close to everything else he has in the pipeline.  This was one of those 2020 exiles that had to be pushed back because of the pandemic, and surprisingly in it’s place, we got an unexpected Lin-Manuel placeholder in the middle of that summer season.  Disney+ pushed ahead a planned release of a filmed version of the Hamilton musical on stage to give everyone something exciting to watch while we were all stuck at home.  This was both a blessing and a negative for the uprooted Heights, because one the accessibility of Hamilton now increased awareness of Lin-Manuel’s artistry and made that musical even more popular, but at the same time, it was raising the bar higher for a movie that was supposed to be seen first.  Now that it is finally making it to theaters, in a hybrid release with HBO Max, does In the Heights hold up well to the hype.  I’d say so, though I do feel like it falls short of all-time greatness.  As an exercise in adapting a stage musical for the big screen, I’d say that it does it’s job spectacularly well.  Director Jon M. Chu, who cut his teeth making music videos and dance movies like Step Up (2006) certainly knows how to stage a musical number and with a lot of panache.  You can see inspirations from Busby Berkeley to Jerome Robbins throughout each show stopping musical number, which all works to the movie’s favor as it tries to translate what worked on the stage into something that will work on the screen (which is not as easy as it sounds).  What’s more important is that it compliments Miranda’s music perfectly, matching the energy of the melodies with the flourish of the visuals.  Even if there are things that the movie may fall short on, it at the very least remains entertaining.  And there are plenty of moments throughout where the movie really does soar and takes your breath away.

Unfortunately, the musical moments may be a little too good in this movie, because it ends up minimizing everything else in between.  Whenever the movie goes into dramatic, dialogue driven mode, it does kind of deflate, and you are just hoping that another musical number will bring it back to roaring life.  The non-musical moments are not necessarily bad; they have some genuinely nice moments of humanity strung about.  But, it becomes very clear that most of the effort in this movie went into the musical numbers.  The in between moments don’t have a visual bombast that the musical numbers do.  They are just filmed like a standard movie.  It probably derives from the fact that much of the movie is shot on location, which is a plus, but it also means that it takes on a basic feel whenever the music isn’t filling the scene.  It’s hard to know what they could have done better.  Musicals of the past benefitted from the stylized, closed environments of the movie studios, like Mary Poppins (1964) and My Fair Lady (1964), or an amazingly picturesque place like Salzburg, Austria in The Sound of Music (1965).  For In the Heights, whenever it’s not out in the streets, the movie is in the interior of someone’s rundown apartment, and it’s hard to bring visual excitement to that.  Not that it can’t be done, but when you see the effort put into the musical moments in this movie, those interior scenes really do come off as an afterthought.  It doesn’t ruin the movie as a whole, but it does seem to hold things back a bit. Overall, the movie is lively, but uneven.  At least the heavy duty work is performed by the musical numbers, and they do carry the movie.  Two numbers in particular, “96,000” and “Patience and Faith” may be some of the best musical sequences ever put to film. It’s in those musical numbers where you feel both Chu and Miranda really trying to match their cinematic predecessors and for the most part the movie does emulate the best of the movie musical. I really think that’s what most people are going to take away from this movie in the end, and they’ll be largely pleased by it.

It’s interesting how the movie chose to cast it’s characters as well. Lin-Manuel originated the role of Usnavi on Broadway, something he would later do as well when he played Alexander Hamilton at the center of his own musical, but for this movie, the part went to Hamilton alum Anthony Ramos. Clearly Ramos was someone who Miranda could trust in the role, and Ramos doesn’t disappoint. In fact he brings a little bit more to role than Lin-Manuel likely could’ve on film. Miranda is admittedly an okay singer, with his strength found more in rap. You can forgive him for being a little subpar in something since he excels in so many other fields. Ramos on the other hand not only carries every tune, he is accomplished at rapping and dancing as well. He may not spit fire with as much precision as Miranda, but he keeps up with the man’s complex beats pretty well. The movie’s ensemble is also perfectly suited in their roles as well. It even makes good use of Jimmy Smits, whose a bit of a novice to musicals. The general great chemistry with the entire cast particularly sells the idea of this community as a family, and you’ll find yourself hoping for all of them to find their happy endings. A special mention should go to Olga Merediz, whose Abuela Claudia is the musical’s beating heart. Her performance is absolutely going to knock people out in the theaters, and I wouldn’t be surprised if she is shortlisted for a nomination at next year’s Oscars. Like the best Broadway musicals, it’s the strength of the ensemble that separates the great from the mediocre, and In the Heights has an excellent ensemble that does the musical justice. And those missing Lin-Manuel in the lead will be happy to know that he’s still present in the movie, playing the smaller role of Piraguero, who has his own pleasant story arc in the movie.

I also want to point out the incredible way that the neighborhood of Washington Heights becomes a character within the movie itself. Lin-Manuel, from the outset wanted to tell the story of his childhood home, and help the world discover this little slice of a New York that most people didn’t know that much about. Like I stated earlier, shooting this movie on location in the real Heights gives it this authenticity that otherwise wouldn’t have been possible on a studio lot. What is especially impressive is that the real locations are worked beautifully into the lavish musical numbers, and each helps to make the Heights feel like this special, magical place. The title number in the opening puts a chorus line of dancers in a busy intersection, “96,000” sets an epic dance routine in a community pool, and “Patience and Faith” in a subway car. You really do see an image of the world this neighborhood creates for itself that sprung from the childhood imagination of Lin-Manuel Miranda. And it does for on location shooting the same same kind of cinematic flourish that we saw in musicals like The Sound of Music and La La Land (2016). I’ve never seen the actual Washington Heights, and I’m sure that it’s probably not 100% like it is in this movie, but you can tell this is a story from someone who wants to give back to the place that reared him up, and it’s presented with a great amount of love. It pleases me that the effort to bring that to the big screen brought the filming right into the neighborhood itself, which I’m sure was a boon to the local economy. And in that respect, it does exactly what the best musicals always do, which is transport the audience into its own unique world.

The strengths of the musical, In the Heights, do outweigh the faults, but the shortcomings do bring the musical down a bit from all time heights. It is a long movie (2 1/2 hours) which is on par with most stage productions, but quite a lot for a cinematic experience. And the deflated dramatic moments do make you feel that length. At least when the musical numbers kick into gear the movie doesn’t disappoint. What I especially appreciate is the fact that director Chu was thinking about what would look best on the big screen when staging his musical numbers. Oftentimes, this is something that sinks most musical adaptations for the big screen, as the directors tend to think that you just shoot what worked on the stage. These are two different mediums entirely, and making musicals work for the big screen requires a different visual perspective. It’s something that other adaptations like The Phantom of the Opera (2004) and Les Miserables forgot and took for granted, and ultimately both of those musicals failed to live up to their stage bound counterparts. In the Heights thankfully understands what it’s supposed to be, and it even does a few things different to help it stand on it’s own. As a musical experience, it is interesting to see finally the musical that put Lin-Manuel Miranda on the map. It’s ambitious, but also a humble start, and something that he certainly would build upon when he moved on to his mammoth sophomore effort; the industry redefining Hamilton. I almost wish I had seen this one first last summer, so that I didn’t have Hamilton to judge it by. It’s a little unfair, considering Heights existed in a pre-Hamilton world and was never judged based on this before. Who knows, I may have been a little more forgiving of this movie. In any case, I’m happy this movie is finally out now, and it is very much well worth seeing, especially on a big screen. As Broadway and Hollywood begin to rebuild themselves in a post-COVID world together, it’s hopefully musicals like In the Heights that helps audiences remember what makes musicals so special in the world in the first place.

Rating: 8/10

There is just something about the Disney villains that has captured the imagination of audiences around the world.  You look around the web and you’ll find numerous devoted fans of the famous baddies, showing their love with everything from fan art to full blown cos-playing.  And why is that?  It’s not like any of these fans are endorsing any of the bad deeds that these villains enact in their individual films.  There are a number of factors that are the reason for this.  One thing is that when it comes to portraying these characters, Disney has always gone big.  The Disney villains are larger than life, often given voice by actors relishing their time in the character’s skin, and thanks to the animated medium, they are often distinctively designed as well.  You’ll often find that when people describe who the best character was in any given Disney movie, they’ll more than often say it’s the villain.  In many cases, the villain in a Disney movie is the most well drawn and interesting of the bunch, compounded even more when there is a rather weak protagonist at the center.  And for many actors and animators that work on these movies, most will even say that they will actively campaigned for the role of bringing these baddies to life.  Overall, there is a proud legacy of Disney creating memorable villains that we all love to hate, beginning with the Evil Queen in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) and extending all the way up to recent members of the club like Dr. Facilier in The Princess and the Frog (2009).  The rogues gallery of Disney villains has become such a strong grouping of classic characters, that Disney has even begun giving them their own live action films putting them front and center in their own stories.  This was started back in 2014 when Disney reimagined the fairy tale of Sleeping Beauty (1959) by putting the focus on the villainous Maleficent, and showing the story from her side in the movie bearing the same name.  Now, Disney is turning to another one of their classics, 101 Dalmatians (1961) and giving it’s legendary villain her own backstory with the new movie, Cruella (2021).

Cruella comes to us out of a long line of recent Disney remakes of their animated classics.  It makes sense that Disney would focus their attention on the thing that most people remember from the original film, being Cruella De Vil herself.  First imagined in the original 1956 children’s novel by Dodie Smith, Cruella instantly became an icon in her big screen debut in the Disney film.  Voiced with delicious glee by character actress Betty Lou Gerson (doing her best Tallulah Bankhead impression) and animated by one of Walt Disney’s celebrated Nine Old Men, Marc Davis, Cruella takes an already lovely story about the titular family of Dalmatians and makes it into an all time classic.  She also provided the template for a certain kind of Disney villain that isn’t motivated by a lust for power or pursuing a vendetta.  Her villainy is purely maniacal in nature and sadly all too real in our world; cruelty just for the sake of it.  She is motivated by nothing more than to wear a coat made from spotted Dalmatian skin, solely because she thinks it will look good on her.  Being both that demented and a larger than life figure has endeared her as one of the all time greats in the Disney canon.  In fact, long before Disney ever began their trend of remaking every one of their animated classics, they had already given 101 Dalmatians the live action treatment in a 1996 film starring Glenn Close as Cruella.  That remake itself proved to be so successful that it even spawned it’s own sequel with 102 Dalmatians (2000), with the focus increasingly on Cruella herself.  Given that these previous remakes adhered closely to the original, another remake today would’ve been a bit of overkill.  So, instead of rehashing the same story over again, Disney decided to wind the clock back more and reveal how Cruella became the villain that she is in a new origin story.  Thus, we get Cruella, which attempts to answer every question we have about Ms. De Vil, from how she got her iconic two tone hair to why she has a thing against Dalmatians in the first place.  The only question that remains is do we want those questions answered, or is it better to leave Cruella the enigmatic monster that she is?

The story begins all the way back in Cruella’s early childhood.  Young Estella (Tipper Seifert-Cleveland) has a hard time behaving in school, often getting into fights and disrespecting authority.  Her mother Catherine (Emily Beecham) calls this bad side of her daughter Cruella, and instructs her daughter to keep Cruella hidden away so that she doesn’t get into more trouble.  When the situation gets dire for the mother and child, Catherine hopes to get help from a wealthy benefactor.  Unfortunately, the wealthy benefactor’s pet Dalmatians send Catherine falling off a cliff, and Estella now finds herself orphaned and mourning her devoted mother.  Making her way eventually to London, she meets a pair of pick pockets named Jasper and Horace.  They reluctantly take her in and teach her the tricks of their trade.  10 years later, grown up Estella (Emma Stone) is finding her life of scamming and stealing with her two companions unfulfilling.  Luckily for her, Jasper (Joel Fry) has managed to secure a job position for her in one of the most elite fashion stores in London through the kindness of his own heart, though Horace (Paul Walter Hauser) still thinks there is an angle behind it.  Though happy to start a new, straight-laced life, Estella eventually finds her dream job is not what she hoped it would be, and soon she begins to let her bad side out.  Remarkably, an act of vandalism at the store garners the attention of The Baroness (Emma Thompson), the queen of the London fashion world, and she offers Estella a job on the spot.  Again, this turns out to be too good to be true, as the Baroness is revealed to be a nightmare of a boss.  And this ultimately leads Estella to give up any pretense of civility she has left and fully embrace the Cruella inside.  Through a series of bold stunts, given publicity assistance by former classmate and friend Anita Darling (Kirby Howell-Baptiste), Cruella soon creates a name for herself as a new fashion icon, directly challenging the Baroness’ supremacy, but as she soon learns, the Baroness is not one to take things lying down.  What ensues is a test of whether or not Estella/Cruella can withstand the Baroness’ wrath, and ultimately determine once and for all if she needs to break bad in order to defeat someone who is even worse.

Naturally there will be many comparisons between this and Disney’s Maleficent, as they are both revisionist takes on these iconic villains.  While the film Maleficent did have a decent performance from Angelina Jolie in the title role, the movie otherwise failed because it sugar-coated the things that made Maleficent such an iconic villain to begin with, and ultimately resulted in an underwhelming movie as a whole.  It was a movie that missed the point of what made the character great in the first place.  Now, I will say that as a movie, Cruella is far better than Maleficent, but it unfortunately falls into some of the same pitfalls that undermines it’s overall effectiveness.  Cruella’s main fault is that it ends up defanging what would have otherwise been an interesting descent into darkness for the character, just so it could still appeal to family audiences.  By pulling it’s punches, Disney just ends up making another product pandering to the masses, rather than exploring the authenticity of the origins of evil.  What is frustrating is that there does seem to be a really good movie in there trying to break free of it’s genre constraints.  Brought to the screen by director Craig Gillespie (I, Tonya) and screenwriters Tony McNamara (The Favourite) and Dana Fox (Isn’t it Romantic), the movie can be really summed up like this; hokey first act, strong engaging second act, and underwhelming final act.  The middle section of this movie, where most other films usually struggle with, is actually where the movie finds it’s voice and begins to sing.  It’s pretty much when Emma Thompson enters the picture that the movie finally begins to pick up, because it’s when the movie is able to pit our main character against an adversary, and with it, sparks begin to fly.  All the ways Cruella manages to thwart and outsmart the Baroness really are fun to watch and it actually helps you to forget that you are watching a remake of a Disney movie overall.  But, whenever the movie reminds you that you are indeed watching a movie based on an animated classic,  (with numerous Easter eggs and inside jokes) it undermines the story that is being told.  Had the movie stuck with the more interesting angle of how bad people often turn bad through a cycle of abuse by the people in their lives, it might have made the movie far more interesting than it ultimately ends up being.

That’s why a movie like Joker works where Maleficent and Cruella do not.  Joker did go all the way with their title character’s full arc into villainy.  Though the movie did portray moments where you empathize with the Joker upon seeing the hardships in his life, it still did not pull back and turn him into something of an anti-hero.  That’s why his arc was so harrowing, because we see the full destruction of a person’s humanity as we watch him become more and more villainous.  The Disney movies don’t really seem to know what they want their villains to be; hero, anti-hero, villain, misunderstood monster, who knows?  Like I stated before, had the movie gone all the way, we could see an interesting arc play out for Cruella, as she embraces more of her darker side.  Or they could’ve dispensed that entirely and showed her to be a misunderstood anti-hero.  This uneasy middle ground the movie opts ultimately makes the end result feel like a cheat.  Either go all the way bad, or don’t.  The unevenness of the movie comes really in the late second act turn.  I won’t spoil it, but there is a secret revealed at the close of the second act that unfortunately undercuts all the goodwill that led up to it, and sets up a lame, predictable climax.  Up to that point, the movie had an interesting battle of wits going, but then it suddenly turns cliché as it tries to stick a landing.  Even worse, it tries to tie things together where it begins to set up the events of the original story of the 101 Dalmatians, which seems antithetical to the story that this movie was trying to tell in the first place.  I feel like the filmmakers initially had a vision of what they wanted to do with the character of Cruella, and then through executive interference, ultimately had to compromise along the way.  As a result, Disney just ends up reinforcing how much these movies are inferior to the originals, instead of actually taking advantage of these titles and doing something bold and new with them.

Though the plot is ultimately a let down in the long run, there are some saving graces in the movie’s favor that does help to elevate it over some of Disney’s other remakes.  For one thing, I found the performances in this movie to be incredibly strong, especially for a live action Disney movie.  Emma Stone in particular commands in the title role.  I like the fact that she doesn’t simply try to impersonate the character that we all know.  This is her own spin on Cruella, and she manages to give her a surprising amount of character depth that otherwise isn’t there on the page.  Apart from getting the accent down perfect and looking good in all those lavish costumes, there is some amazing subtle work that Stone does with Cruella throughout the movie.  In particular, she gets a lot across with her eyes.  She creates this sinister glare that really defines a lot for the character, showing just how much she is relishing being bad.  She also runs the gamut of emotions pretty well too, never going fully over the top which helps to center the tone of the movie pretty well.  Had she gone full cartoonish like Glenn Close did in her turn as the character, the performance would have seriously clashed with the rest of the movie.  Close’s performance as Cruella was perfect for her more light-heated movie, and Emma Stone is perfectly attuned to what her film asks of her.  Not to be outdone, but Emma Thompson also delivers the goods as the Baroness.  She turns what could have been a one-note villain into an interesting examination of extreme narcissism run amok, and in turn makes the Baroness a villain you love to hate.  The movie really does shine with both Emma’s on screen together, and thankfully we get a whole lot of them working off each other.  I also especially like the extra character development that they give Jasper and Horace, two buffoonish goons from the original movie that actually are given much more to do here, acting as Cruella’s de facto family.  Both Joel Fry and Paul Walter Hauser give the characters far more depth than we’ve ever seen from these characters in prior iterations, and that’s a welcome change.

One thing that I’m sure is going to be celebrated about this movie are the lavish costumes and production design.  I’ll definitely credit the movie for capturing the feeling of it’s era, which is mid-1970’s London.  Especially with the fashion world, the movie does capture that punk rock evolution influence that defined the setting from that era, and that’s especially reflected in the movie’s costuming.  Created by Oscar-winning costume designer Jenny Beavan (Mad Max: Fury Road), the costumes are creative and memorable, including a stunning red dress that is revealed after Cruella set’s her flash paper robe alight.  While there is a lot of punk rock influence in all of Cruella’s outfits, it still does feel in character with her as a whole.  I’m actually happy that Disney didn’t try to force in the iconic fur coat from the previous movie, and instead defined this Cruella as something different (albeit still with the salt and pepper hairstyle).  Director Gillespie does also get the visual style authentic, drawing inspiration from British New Wave icons like John Schlesinger and Nicholas Roeg in his direction.  The music choices also put the movie in a definitive setting, with needle drops that include the likes of the Rolling Stones, Nina Simone, the Zombies, Deep Purple, and even ELO, though sometimes the choices are a little too on the nose.  It all helps to put the movie in it’s rightful tonal setting.  An anti-authoritarian trouble maker like Cruella would flourish in this era of culture, particularly in the fashion world.  Which is why there are quite a lot of things to like about this movie in a visual sense.  Often times, I feel like the Disney remakes have run into the trouble of being over-produced; putting way too much attention into the ornate production design and not enough into the story and characters themselves.  Here, it actually works in the movie’s favor, and more importantly feels authentic.  Cruella isn’t trying to do too much eye candy, but when it does, it’s used appropriately.

Ultimately, Cruella is a frustrating movie.  It is better than the average Disney remake, but I still felt like it missed the mark as a whole.  Had the movie actually not played it safe and challenged it’s audience with a more authentic origin of it’s iconic villain, than I think the movie could have stood out more as a triumph.  Sadly, it feels like a compromise in the end, with some at Disney not willing to alienate any audiences who had any qualms about rooting for a villain.  In a frustrating way, I can see the points where this movie could have broken out and really show us something interesting.  I like what the movie initially was trying to say, that villainy comes out through experience and learning all the wrong lessons in life.  But, by the end, Cruella doesn’t learn any lessons that may have pushed her off the edge of true villainy nor does it show the breaking bad moment that culminates her journey towards the dark side.  It just neatly wraps everything up in the end, giving Cruella the reward she wants, with no real indication that she’s all good or bad in the end.  For Maleficent, the failure of that movie was that it made a hero out of someone who was more interesting as a villain in the most nonsensical way possible.  With Cruella, the movie could’ve gone either way and it would have worked for the character, instead of this ambiguous middle ground that the movie opts for.  Still, it does feature much better performances than what we’ve seen from the average Disney remake, as well as a better visual aesthetic overall.  I just wish Disney would not be so afraid to give these movies a little more bite.  The reason why Cruella has endured so much over the years is because she is a distinctive personality; hilariously over the top in the way she presents herself, but still menacingly hard edged to be viewed as a threat.  That’s why Cruella has often been used as a shorthand in our culture to describe a vain, egomaniacal person in society, usually one from a center of celebrity or power.  Disney’s Cruella has a lot of things going for it, but it ultimately can’t rise above the shortcomings that it unfortunately has inherited from other remakes.  Honestly, they should just let their villains remain rotten to the core and not have us start to see the softer side, allowing us to see what evil looks like and how people can be turned bad.  Because like the song about Cruella De Vil tells us, “If she doesn’t scare you, no evil thing will.”

Rating: 7/10