The backdrop to Kenneth Branagh's sparkling, live-action Cinderella, for Walt Disney Pictures, is that vague mittel Europe of turreted castles and distant snowy peaks, but the costumes and interiors are classic mutton-chop Victoriana, giving a powerful Dickensian flavour to the familiar story of the world's favourite domestic drudge.
Lily James is fine in the title role, just about overcoming the challenge, which any pantomime principal boy knows well, of being preternaturally good and kind, but not too boringly insipid. If the film belongs to anyone, however, it is Cate Blanchett as the wicked stepmother, looking capable of lacerating with her cheekbones anyone she doesn't cut to the quick with her words.
Or to be more precise, Chris Weitz's words. The screenwriter (who also scripted the 2002 adaptation of Nick Hornby's novel, About A Boy), does a solid job with the dialogue, camping it up just enough, but not too much.
I loved Blanchett's entrance, sweeping imperiously with her cat Lucifer into Cinderella's affluent home as the new wife to the girl's loving but guileless widowed father (Ben Chaplin). 'She too had known grief,' says Helena Bonham Carter's voiceover, 'but she wore it wonderfully.'
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Witty, charming and a delight for little girls everywhere, Kenneth Branagh's Cinderella is sparklingly good!
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