Do you know how often I give a movie four and a half stars? I’ve done over 50 movie reviews and I only gave such a rating to two of them … but today you can make that three. To be honest, I probably should have given this rating to a couple other really good movies I’ve reviewed, such as Annie Hall, but I really wanted to save such a high number for the absolute best of the best. For this reason, it is odd that I would choose to give this rating to a film that stars one of my least favorite actors in the lead role. (What, you don’t see why I don’t like Drew Barrymore? I can’t really explain it, but I find her voice pretty annoying, and the roles she plays are often the kind of characters that seem like they were written just to bug me.)
Here’s the thing: that’s pretty much the movie’s only flaw. Everything else, from the story to the dialogue to the performances to the visuals to the music, was done right. The world of the film is enchanting, the characters are delightful, and the story manages to capture all of the best elements of the story upon which it is based, Cinderella, while carefully adjusting what does not hold up. The story of “Cinderella” is a timeless one, which means it does not need an update unless something extra special will be added. Rather than adding anything too terribly brilliant or different, this film adds the basic thing that “Cinderella” lacked – a love story that’s actually a love story. And it’s a good love story at that.
The movie owes much of its success to the main character, and while I think it was the writing that made the character great, Barrymore’s performance was really not bad. The character could have been ruined by someone who lacked talent, but Barrymore’s acting talent allowed for the character to shine through in exactly the way it needed to, making aCinderella that the audience really cares about. It helped that she was doing an accent, but what really helped was the way the dialogue was written. It was done in such a way that the character is strong, smart, independent, and brave, without seeming like an annoying know-it-all. This is a fine example of the type of character I would like to see more often in cinema.
If I may note one other thing, and I do believe this is key, I think it helps to have the writer be the director, or at least have some additional control over the project so his/her vision gets across. Many of the other movie’s I’ve reviewed that I enjoyed the most had Woody Allen as both the writer and the director, or at the very least as both writer and star. Planes, Trains, and Automobiles came very close to getting four and a half stars out of me, and Silver Linings Playbook succeeded in doing so. Both of those had the writer direct as well. Perhaps this is just the wishful thinking of a screenwriting control freak, but I want to see this become common practice.
