CINDERELLA
★★
OUT 3 SEPTEMBER (AMAZON PRIME VIDEO) / CERT TBC / 113 MINS
DIRECTOR Kay Cannon
CAST Camila Cabello, Idina Menzel, Minnie Driver
“Have courage and be kind,” Cinderella once told us in Disney’s 1950 animation. It’s simple and pure, and thus powerful — something the latest all-singing, all-dancing movie musical remake could have learned from. Popstar Camila Cabello makes her acting debut with a shrill performance in an über-progressive, painfully self-aware take, in which a bland Prince Charming (Nicholas Galitzine) wears a tiny earring and Idina Menzel as the wicked stepmother belts out Madonna’s ‘Material Girl’ for some reason. It’s a grating cacophony, in which the story’s earnest magic spell is broken with every wink in the shallow, performatively wry script. Cinderella has been given more independence (a business plan but also a fringe) in this version — but at what cost?