THE billing for this movie puts Emma Stone at the top of the list. She does well in the title role.

But in my book, the film’s real star is Emma Thompson playing The Baroness, as nasty a villainess as any you might find in this or any other movie from Disney. Or any movie from any production house capable of earning a PG classification in Australia. How Ms T compares with Glenn Close (who in 1996 played Cruella de Vil and is here credited in a list of producers), I don’t know. 

The genesis of “Cruella” is the 1961 Disney animation “101 Dalmatians”. In “Cruella”, the spottedy dogs are down to three – no director in his right mind would put 101 of that easily-excited breed in front of a camera.

The original animation came out before I got the first movie-reviewing gig ever, in any Canberra medium. Craig Gillespie directs this live action remake written by Dana Fox, Tony McNamara and three others. Set in London in the 1970s, this one acknowledges Dodie Smith’s original novel. I suspect the resemblance ends there. I enjoyed it, although some of its bits were a tad off the mark. It’s the sort of movie in which credibility has to back off a bit.

This live action remake runs for 138 minutes, which might be wearisome for youngsters. For more mature viewers, including grown-ups, it’s a bit of a hoot that reeks of money. IMDb says there were 736 people involved in its production and even if some of them (lots of big crowd sequences) came cheap, others who did not would have made a sizeable hole in the estimated US$200 million budget.