#Brandy cinderella movie

More movie musicals could stand to trim skippable songs and unnecessary dialogue to channel the high-wire momentum of the stage, rather than try to replicate it exactly. Yet the movie is still less than 90 minutes long, thanks to its lean and efficient script: The cruelty of Peters’ stepmother and the magnificence of Houston’s fairy godmother are communicated with just a scattering of lines, leaving plenty of time for Goldberg’s recurring wordless bit. These songs - along with the hopeful opening number “The Sweetest Sounds,” reallocated from Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “No Strings” - were added for the screen, a common practice of musical adaptations, but none feel extraneous in fact, they’ve since become “Cinderella” canon. And of course, superstar Houston gets a soaring solo in “There’s Music in You” to close out the show. “Falling in Love With Love,” pulled from the lesser-known Richard Rodgers-Lorenz Hart show “The Boys From Syracuse,” fills out Peters’ villainous matriarch while showcasing her comedic sensibilities and Tony-winning vocals. As Shondaland’s oral history of the movie notes, for instance, “The Prince Is Giving a Ball” was expanded - by Fred Ebb, no less - to give Alexander, by that point a three-time Emmy nominee for “Seinfeld,” a slapstick spectacle. “Cinderella,” thanks to allowances by the composer’s estate, also features the sort of flexibility with the original text that no successful revamp can do without. This supporting cast anchors the production in theatrical musicality, instead of pulling the viewer out of the narrative with famous people who can’t sing (a la Pierce Brosnan of “Mamma Mia!” and Alec Baldwin of “Rock of Ages”). Instead, “Cinderella” centers on Norwood, with support from well-known actors with theater experience: Whoopi Goldberg and Victor Garber as the king and queen, Jason Alexander as the palace valet and Bernadette Peters as Cinderella’s stepmother. The pairing of Norwood, a relative newcomer to the movie musical, with Montalban, a more experienced hand, points to another lesson to be learned from “Cinderella”: More productions should take chances on fresh faces instead of signing the same handful of Hollywood names - James Corden, Meryl Streep and Anna Kendrick, for example - to yet another lead role. Plus, her chemistry with the handsome prince, played by Broadway actor Paolo Montalban, is downright magical. Thanks to her nonchalant delivery of the more proactive lines in Robert Freedman’s new book, she underscores this version’s repositioning of the heroine from a young woman passively waiting to be rescued to one who takes charge of her fate.

It doesn’t matter that Cinderella’s stepsisters look nothing alike Veanne Cox and Natalie Desselle Reid deliver the best broad humor of the movie, playing off each other as well as any seasoned comedic duo.īeyond her groundbreaking status as Disney’s first Black princess, Norwood’s underrated performance is quietly spellbinding in its own right, with a subtle yet effervescent sweetness that captures the classic’s Inherently Good protagonist.

Of this admittedly limited field, “Cinderella” remains the best example of colorblind casting of a screen musical to date, and the movie still offers a useful template for potential successors: Not only does the company, including background actors, collectively reflect our world, but the principals are carefully selected to suit their roles regardless of appearance. Just as “Carmen Jones” and “The Wiz” did with the opera “Carmen” and the movie “The Wizard of Oz,” respectively, “Cinderella” takes a well-known (and usually white) story and puts actors of color at the forefront, something only a few studio-released movie musicals - such as 2004’s “Bride and Prejudice,” 2014’s “Annie” and, arguably, 2019’s “Cats” - have attempted since.

14, 2021 This article misstates that Rodgers and Hammerstein wrote “No Strings.” It was composed solely by Richard Rodgers.īrandy Norwood stars in the multicultural fairy tale in a first for the centuries-old plot, with previous live-action treatments led by Mary Pickford in 1914, Julie Andrews in 1957 and Lesley Ann Warren in 1965.

Brandy cinderella