Anyroads

Fun with Disney: Cinderella

Because watching a movie is no fun unless you share your every thought with the internet.

Remember when movies used to have credits at the beginning with intro music and other such fancy dealings? We’re such cinematic peasants now. My head is hung in shame.

We all know this story. Literally, there’s some version of it in almost every culture around the world. Rich girl is orphaned and gets indenture-servanted by her stepfam. She leads a unique social life in the topmost tower of her house chateau.

I want to be concerned that she seems to be projecting a lot onto random little animal friends (who may be carrying the bubonic plague, I don’t know what era we’re in), but they seem to do well with it and I’m more curious that she sleeps with her hair braided. Doesn’t that cause split ends? Am I wrong? Should I be doing this? SOMEONE GUIDE ME. Maybe making tiny clothes for various animals is good for split ends.

It is morning. Naturally, singing ensues. This may be why morning talk radio was invented.

Yes to you, rebel bird! No tiny clothes for you! Damn the man!

This is not a shower. Also, doesn’t she have wooden floors? How warped is the floor? I worry about her floor.

Some new kid is caught in a mouse trap. A rescue party forms. The kind of party with brown streamers and no pinata. Cinderella gets out some mouse clothes, because she not only custom-makes them, she has extras.

That is very intricate work. Lace trim? Who puts lace trim on tiny mouse clothes? I mean, aside from serial killers and mouse tailors.
Also, that’s a mighty fancy dresser for a poor girl.

It turns out the new mouse is a dude and is comfortable with that gender assignment, so he will not be needing the tiny pink dress with lace trim.

I don’t understand why this mouse has a speech impediment. They all kind of do. I just don’t get what Disney is trying to do here. Is it like Rugrats, when the babies understand each other’s gurgling and Disney thought children would understand these mice better, because they don’t know how to talk well yet either?

Everyone goes to get breakfast, which means the mice bulk up the run-time of the film with mischievous antics involving the cat.

Kind of bored like that cat right now. I signed up for a fairy tale, not Tom and Jerry reruns.

Cinderella takes breakfast to her family. I’m pretty sure she gets the least screen time out of anyone in this film. If she weren’t a drawing, I’d tell her to get a new agent.

Hello Mr. Bond. I see you have met my kitty kat.

Some stuff happens, Cinderella gets more chores. We learn that the stepmother is not likeable, but has fantastic villain hair.

I miss this Disney. The one that let animators go on random visual tangents just because they could draw something pretty.

Cinderella sings again. Stalker mouse friends look on.

Increasingly intrigued by the transportation system these mice have built. There’s some N.I.M.H. business going down here.

Fancy mail comes. From the palace. Ooh la la. Cinderella boldly interrupts a music lesson to deliver it. We get to see how unlikeable the stepsister characters are, which to be fair to Disney, is displayed more through mean and selfish characteristics than looks. Which is more than I can say for Cinderella, who I’m still not sure why I’m supposed to like, other than she’s pretty and is a pushover.

I know I’m supposed to hate these two dimensional excuses for low grade physical comedy, but I consistently find myself wanting their hairdo. Maybe with a smaller bow.

“There’s to be a ball and every eligible maiden is to attend”

“why, that’s us!”

“and I’m so eligible”

So this ball is kind like a one night only sample store sale for wives? There should be more of this. I’m tired of making an effort. Let’s just go back to times when all I had to do was be pretty and wealthy (but not of my own accord) and wait for some dude to take me home forever.

LOOKIT THAT REDHEAD. Love it. Facial express yourself, girlfriend!

Cinderella gets to go too, if she can finish her chores and find a dress. The fam overworks her (natch), and the mice set to making her a dress because she won’t have time herself. Some of the boys go off to steal materials from other rooms in the house. We have padded out the film with a few more precious minutes of zzzzzzzzzzz…

Totes over the mice v. cat plotline. Next.

Oh, I get it. Cinderella makes tiny clothes for tiny animals, so they make one big dress for her. That seems fair. Look at Disney, supporting fair trade business ethics before their time! And they even added lace trim!

Although this seems like an unsafe working environment

The dress turns out great. Stepmother does not like this. Stepdaughters don’t either. They rip it up Ricki Lake Show style. Cinderella is sad, they leave in their fancy garb.

So… their fancy clothes are their regular clothes with butt extensions and a feather on the head? WHAT TIME PERIOD ARE WE IN?

Cinderella does the requisite Disney heroine sob-and-run, because she can’t cry where she is, she has to find the perfect place to weep into her own arms.

Did she just turn on the light only to run through the room? What a waste of energy. And how does that even work? Didn’t they only have gas lamps in fairy tale times? I have no idea when this story takes place. Don’t tell me the girl has no running water but there’s electricity in the house. Oh, I’m sorry. CHATEAU.

I don’t know what’s going on but it looks like Tinkerbell is waging nuclear war. This may be a better time to run away.

Oh, it’s just a little old lady in a blue klan robe materializing out of thin air. Carry on.

Turns out it’s not an elder from the KKK, just her fairy godmother. She Harry Potters up some transpo (in song, because we’re unknowingly watching Glee), servants and a fancy dress. I’m not even going to bother posting the dress shot because we all know it, and chokers are so 1995.

I know it’s magic and all, but don’t you need real wheels? That, like… turn?

Don’t hate me, but I didn’t even bother screen-capping the ball. I kind of checked out at this point. Basically, the king wants his son to get married because he wants grandkids, the prince is super bored until he sees Cinderella wandering around like a lost and confused little lamb, because pretty girls in need of assistance are the hottest. They dance, she runs away before the spell breaks at midnight, the king is super angry that his son’s breeding partner got away. He yells a lot at the Duke for this, who puts up with a lot and hopefully gets paid enough to put up with such hazardous working conditions.

Fire hazard

Cinderella left a slipper, because otherwise this wouldn’t be Cinderella. The Duke hocks it around the kingdom, because whomever the slipper fits will be the prince’s bride. They don’t have a choice, this is just going to happen, apparently. I’m wondering if the mysterious time period we’re in might be the middle ages.

Cinderella gets all dreamy eyed when her stepmother announces this. Stepmother is smart and evil, and locks Cinderella away while mad-dogging her in the shadows.

Girl, tell me your hair secrets. That is some killer volume.

The mice will not take these shenanigans. They will get the key to free Cinderella, even if it means padding out the film’s run-time with 10-15 more minutes! Little heroes, they are.

I haven’t understood a word these dudes have said the whole film. It’s like the bad vocabulary train collided with the speech impediment bus. And I can’t even tell if they’re about to throw down with the stepmother, or duke it out to be mayor of Unibrow City.

Meanwhile, the sisters try on the shoes. There is more fail than in a truckload of Lolcat memes.

This seems inappropriate

The key is gotten. The mice take it upstairs. Add five minutes.

STFU. All those secret NIMH passageways and way-too-smart-for-non-lab-mice devices, and you’re taking the stairs with that thing? Not buying it.

Honestly? Enough. Just end the story already. I kind of checked out after the first song.

They get the key, Cinderella gets downstairs in time, and it seems all will be well. Stepmother trips up the Duke who breaks his slipper but guess what? Cinderella has the other one! Magicks!

Solution!

Gasp!

Relief!

This may not be the best time to tell you guys this, but not everyone gets to move to the palace with her.

The moral of the story is: have small feet and fancy shoes, and you can bag a rich man. Love at first sight is possible, if you’re both hot and don’t really talk much.

Other gems in this series: The Little Mermaid