Cinderella (1957)

Great Movie
When I bought this movie for my family, I was quite shocked. My first impression was that the movie is totally unrealistic. The racial diversity in every facet of this film was nothing like I expected it to be - the traditional family and intimate relationships being of people among the same race. My children were too young to expect otherwise. They loved the story from the beginning. Their minds weren't conditioned to think of people as so different that they couldn't be members of the same family, paired up as nuptials, or coupled as dancing partners of different races. The only negative things they comment on are the self centeredness and selfish competitiveness of the characters in the film. This Cinderella story is just like any other great story to them. They have watched this movie so much that the adults in my family got used to unusal and unexpected aspects of this movie. Now that we have overcomed our biasnesses, we view this Cinderella film as a great story - about people of the human race. I commend those responsible for being so daring to take such risks. It was well worth the lessons our family learned in addition to having an enjoyable film to watch.

Very Poor Adaptation
Kind of critical to a musical are singers who can act (ideally) or actors who can sing (also great). There is so much of neither in this project. The songs don't translate well to the gravelly, pop-scarred vocal chords of the majority of the cast, most egregiously Brandy, Whoopie and Whitney. A few standouts, though: The prince, B. Peters, Cox, Garber -- most of whom are Broadway musical vets.

Such a shame.

Cute Movie
It was a little confusing to have so many characters of different races all combined together into families. I've nothing against interracial relationships whatsoever, its just that I was confused as to how a Caucasian king and a black queen ended up with an Asian son. But this is a fairy tale and fairy tales are fantasies that don't make sense and aren't supposed to. Besides, if Disney made an all black Cinderella, chances are no one would have seen or bought it (have you noticed that they've never made an animated fairy/hero tale centered around black people? Lion King doesn't count - those were lions not people). Anyway, this was a fun movie. Brandy was a wonderfully, beautiful Cinderella. Her prince was handsome. Her stepmother was appropriately evil and her stepsisters sufficiently obnoxious. Whoopie was the Whoopie I love and after seeing this movie I still can't stand Jason Alexander. For me there were only two weak links in this movie. The worst character was Whitney Houston as the fairy godmother. I just wanted to rip her cape or whatever off of her because her twirling around with it was so annoying. And she came off as just too full of herself to really be caring about Cinderella. The second weakness was the Broadway type song they added for Bernadette Peters to sing. It was a totally different style of song and didn't fit with the other songs in the movie. It seemed as though it was only put in the film to showcase Bernadette's Broadway singing style.