Cinderella

Cinderella is the first film of Disney's second successful age in animation, and the last film of this age that I will be reviewing. Growing up, this was one of the films that I had much easier access to and has left a rather nostalgic imprint on me. With that said, it has been quite some time since I last saw this film so it made for an enjoyable experience getting to watch it again.

Cinderella is one of those films where the plot is so simple and rather short that it makes it hard to really flesh things out a bit. Disney decided to pad out the runtime a bit more by giving us quite an excess of scenes revolving around Cinderella's animal friends as they gather breakfast and do their best to avoid Lucifur, the fat and rather pompous cat of the household. While their antics with Lucifur can be entertaining, it would have been nice to perhaps see more of their relationship with Cinderella instead. To also add to the runtime of the film, we get a couple of scenes with the Duke and the King which are also rather comical and help further the plot a bit more than the mice's scenes do. Despite all of this, the film does seem to go at it's own, slower pace and doesn't try to rush through things at all. One small thing that I actually noticed this time around is that the film takes place largely over the course of only one day, and the following morning, and for some reason I had never really noticed this.

The animation in Cinderella certainly does mark a change in the Disney canon. On the one hand, it is a step up from the War Years shorts, yet it's not quite on the same level as films from later on in the decade such as Sleeping Beauty. The backgrounds are rather simplistic, though not to the same degree as Charlie Brown shorts, yet are still rather nice to look at. The scenes at the ball when Cinderella and the Prince are dancing are among the most visually interesting parts, and the Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo song is also visually fun to watch all of the transformations occurring.

The songs come to us in two different manners. The Work Song, sung by the mice is rather infectious and quite bouncy, as if the previously mentioned Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo. Both of the songs are quite fun and certainly stand out. The other way the songs are presented to us is almost in a much more solemn manner in the form of Sing Sweet Nightengale, and A Dream Is A Wish. These two songs, and the song So This Is Love, are much slower yet are still fully enjoyable to listen to both in the film and on their own.

As for the characters, all of them are rather fun to watch even if the mice do tend to hog the spotlight a bit. Lady Tremaine, or the Evil Stepmother as she's sometimes better known as, is one of Disney's better villains and has a really eerie realness to her. You could see this woman actually existing in our world and is very dangerous in how she uses emotional manipulation to get things done instead of relying on physical force or magical means. Cinderella is quite enjoyable and has a very innocent quality to her without making her younger as a result of it. She does have her one moment where she actually does mock the Stepsisters musical ability and this keeps her from being Too Nice. The mice and Lucifur are quite fun, and I especially enjoy the latter as he's shown to be just as intelligent as his mistress, using tricks to get Bruno in trouble and is able to trap Gus twice with a tea cup while fending off the others attempts to help save the poor mouse.

I think the only thing that really hampers this film, for me personally, is spending a bit too much time with the mice and not quite enough with our main hero and her relationship with them, or perhaps more scenes of Cinderella with the Stepsisters and Stepmother.

4 1/2  /5