Cinderella

Well, since we don't seem to have a thread yet, I thought I'd go ahead and start one. Who saw it, who's going to see it, what did you think?

There aren't really any spoilers to give away. I feel reasonably certain that everyone on this message board knows the basic gist of the story. It's mostly a re-telling of the original with lots of additional character development and some very nice visuals.

I really enjoyed this movie. I'm not a huge fan of the stylized CGI that Disney has been using in live action films of late, but I definitely found it less jarring in this movie than in, say, Maleficent or in Oz the Great and Powerful. As can be expected, the gowns were beautiful, but I also appreciated the care that was taken with the men's costumes. Often I feel like the men's costumes just blend into the background, but here they were on equal footing as far as color and ornamentation.

The film was directed by Kenneth Branagh and his Shakespearean background is evident throughout the film. There's an air of sophistication and grace about this film that's missing in some of its live action predecessors. I'm far from being a Shakespeare fan, but the blending of that sort of ambiance with the Cinderella story really worked beautifully.

A lot of the cast was new to me. I understand that many of them are in Game of Thrones, but I don't watch that show, so basically Cate Blanchett, Helena Bonham Carter, and Stellan Skarsgard (does this man age? He looks younger than he did in Good Will Hunting and that was nearly 20 years ago.) were the only familiar faces for me. New or old, WOW! This cast was spot on. I don't think that these roles were probably the most challenging in the world, but all of the actors did a great job of bringing depth to these characters.

The writing was believable and real. I didn't notice a single awkward line. In fact, the only awkward thing that caught my attention was the fact that both Cinderella and her mother were blonde, but their eyebrows were not. I feel like makeup dropped the ball a little bit with that one. Otherwise, the film was very clean, classic, sweet, and entertaining.

I would note that children might not appreciate the film in its entirety. It's certainly appropriate for all ages as the story is very vanilla and there is no violence, questionable language, adult themes, or any other such concern. They don't revert back to the original source material and have maidens chopping off their toes to fit into the slipper or anything, but the dialog will be very difficult for most children to follow and the several plot points with regard to Cinderella's family are quite clear to the adults in the audience, but might easily fly over the head of a child. If you are taking a child who is younger than about 10-years-old, I would watch the animated classic with them first so they know what the heck is going on.