Review : A New Cinderella Movies

With its vibrant sparkle and enchanting visuals, Cinderella almost makes you believe in magic.

The oft-told story has a surprisingly fresh exuberance. Nearly everything in this Disney live-action fairy tale (*** out of four; rated PG; opens March 13) is charmingly conveyed, while still faithful to the 1950 animated classic.

The lavish production design is baroque and meticulous, down to the detailed appliqués on the dazzling costumes and individual beads on the palace chandeliers. Although the gowns at the ball are a swirl of gorgeous hues, the sumptuous dresses worn by Cate Blanchett — a superb villain as Cinderella's fashion plate of an evil stepmother— are even more arresting.

With her sweet, open face, Downtown Abbey's Lily James makes a delightful and unaffected Cinderella. She begins life as Ella, buoyed by a happy childhood. Her dying mother's (Hayley Atwell) entreaty: Have courage and be kind. Ella makes those words her mantra.

She cheers on her father (Ben Chaplin) as he seeks a second chance for happiness and marries the imperious Lady Tremaine (Blanchett). Ella calmly rises above the shabby way she's treated by her surly and silly stepsisters, Anastasia (Holliday Grainger) and Drizella (Sophie McShera). She even embraces her stepmother's pampered feline, Lucifer, the original grumpy cat.

Ella protects the coterie of mice she considers friends from the jaws of Lucifer. The computer-generated rodents and their quasi-human voices are rather jarring, seeming more like the stepchildren of the singing mice in Babe.

However, the scene in which they're magically transmogrified into noble steeds is an exhilarating whirl. When a garden-variety pumpkin morphs into a gilded coach, we know it's coming, but it's still gasp-inducing in its beauty. Helena Bonham Carter is appealing and playful as Cinderella's glam fairy godmother. Paying homage to the animated version, her magic tricks are achieved with a "Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo."

Only an actress as adept as Blanchett can take a role so easy to caricature and bring to it such subtle shading.

In contrast, the spiteful, oafish stepsisters are dully cartoonish, dressed alike in garish costumes.

Director Kenneth Branagh and screenwriter Chris Weitz have grounded this romantic tale with sincerity amid the dazzle. Ella (nastily renamed Cinderella by her stepfamily) meets Prince Charming (Richard Madden) while on horseback in the forest. Soon, the king (Derek Jacobi) announces they are throwing a ball.

The romantic musical score by composer Patrick Doyle has a lovely timelessness that suits the iconic material.

Though it doesn't have the catchy songs of Enchanted or the witty dialogue of The Princess Bride, Cinderella enthralls with its ravishing style and timeless message of resilience, decency and kindness triumphing over evil.

Basic Plot Story about Cinderella :

By his first wife, he'd had a beautiful young daughter, a girl of unparalleled goodness and sweet temper. The stepmother and her daughters forced the first daughter into servitude, where she was made to work day and night doing menial chores. Cinderella bore the abuse patiently and dared not tell her father, since his wife controlled him entirely.

One day, the Prince invited all the young ladies in the land to a ball, planning to choose a wife from amongst them. The two stepsisters gleefully planned their wardrobes for the ball, and taunted Cinderella by telling her that maids were not invited to the ball.

As the sisters departed to the ball, Cinderella cried in despair. Her Fairy 

Godmother magically appeared and immediately began to transform Cinderella from house servant to the young lady she was by birth, all in the effort to get Cinderella to the ball. She turned a pumpkin into a golden carriage, mice into horses, a rat into a coachman, and lizards into footmen. She then turned Cinderella's rags into a beautiful jeweled gown, complete with a delicate pair of glass slippers. The Godmother told her to enjoy the ball, but warned that she had to return before midnight, when the spells would be broken.

At the ball, the entire court was entranced by Cinderella, especially the Prince. At this first ball, Cinderella remembers to leave before midnight. Back home, Cinderella graciously thanked her Godmother. The Prince had become even more infatuated, and Cinderella in turn became so enchanted by him she lost track of time and left only at the final stroke of midnight, losing one of her glass slippers on the steps of the palace in her haste. The Prince chased her, but outside the palace, the guards saw only a simple country girl leave. The Prince pocketed the slipper and vows to find and marry the girl to whom it belonged. Meanwhile, Cinderella kept the other slipper, which did not disappear when the spell was broken.

The Prince tried the slipper on all the women in the kingdom. When the Prince arrives at Cinderella's villa, the stepsisters tried in vain to win over the prince. Cinderella asked if she might try, while the stepsisters taunted her. Naturally, the slipper fitted perfectly, and Cinderella produced the other slipper for good measure. The stepsisters both pleaded for forgiveness, and Cinderella agreed to let bygones be bygones. Cinderella married the Prince, and the stepsisters also married two lords.

The first moral of the story is that beauty is a treasure, but graciousness is priceless. Cinderella, or The Little Glass Slipper (French: Cendrillon ou La Petite Pantoufle de verre, Italian: Cenerentola, German: Aschenputtel, Russian Золушка, Zolushka), is a European folk tale embodying a myth-element of unjust oppression. Written versions were published by Giambattista Basile in his Pentamerone(1634), by Charles Perrault in Histoires ou contes du temps passé (1697), and by the Brothers Grimm in their folk tale collection Grimms' Fairy Tales (1812).

Although both the story's title and the character's name change in different languages, in English-language folklore "Cinderella" is the archetypal name. The word "Cinderella" has, by analogy, come to mean one whose attributes were unrecognized, or one who unexpectedly achieves recognition or success after a period of obscurity and neglect. The still-popular story of "Cinderella" continues to influence popular culture internationally, lending plot elements, allusions, and tropes to a wide variety of media.

The Aarne–Thompson system classifies Cinderella as "the persecuted heroine". The story of Rhodopis about a Greek slave girl who marries the king of Egypt is considered the earliest known variant of the "Cinderella" story (published 7 BC), and many variants are known throughout the world.