Kay Cannon
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The Cinderella fairy tale has been adapted time and time and time again for the movies and TV, from the 1950 Disney animated version to the Rodgers and Hammerstein musicals from 1957 and 1997 to Kenneth Branagh’s 2015 take to outliers such as “Ella Enchanted” and the Jerry Lewis comedy “Cinderfella” — and now we’ve got a new jukebox musical update with some modern and progressive themes about gender roles, and it’s a most welcome addition to the library.
Contemporary takes on the oft-told classic Cinderella story are nothing new, with movies like Ever After (1998), A Cinderella Story and Ella Enchanted (both released in 2004) being some of the prime examples.
Recent versions focused on more diversity (the Brandy/Whitney Houston version), more agency ("Ever After"), or at least a better explanation for her obedience ("Ella Enchanted").
There’s plenty of storybook elements from bright colors, corny sidekicks, to a soothing rendition of “Need Somebody To Love,” but wait, didn’t “Ella Enchanted” already claim that feat?
1998’s Ever After and 2004’s Ella Enchanted both put an empowering spin on the Cinderella story by giving their Ellas progressive ideals and the courage to seek out a more equal society, while incidentally falling in love along the way.
We have a long history of Hollywood films in which awkward, Superbad high-school-aged boys are allowed to pursue sex and have fun along the way while girls repeatedly get the short end of the stick.
It veers wildly from the style of a coming-of-age comedy like “ Superbad ” to something more family-oriented and heartfelt to the gross-out/raunch flicks we saw in the wake of the success of “There’s Something About Mary.”
“The 40-Year-Old Virgin,” “Superbad,” “Bridesmaids” and others have a genuine heart within them that propels the story and endears the characters even amid scenes that deal with juvenile sex jokes or gross-out moments.
Blockers is a second-generation teen romp openly owing its lineage to Superbad and American Pie while trying something new: not as consumed by its vulgarity, treating its teens who actually look like teens as the over-jaded post-Millennials they supposedly are, and having most of the film’s nudity provided by men, i.e., Gary Cole going full frontal, unashamed of his nice dick.
This potential female version of Superbad is frequently at odds with the more conventional, underwhelming comedy focused on the adult characters, who learn painfully obvious lessons and end up rewarded for some seriously misguided behavior.
Director Kay Cannon, making her debut after writing the Pitch Perfect trilogy and working on 30 Rock , splices together a parental buddy comedy and half a Superbad with girls without making anyone involved seem like a moralizing creep.
On top of all this, Cinderella is a musical, primarily a jukebox of the Moulin Rouge! variety, though the song choices are less than inspired.
Think of it like Baz Luhrmann’s 2001 hit musical Moulin Rouge! and you’ll get the idea.
Cannon keeps the musical numbers coming fast, establishing her film’s fictional kingdom with Janet Jackson’s “Rhythm Nation,” introducing her prince by way of Queen’s “Somebody To Love,” doling out exposition via British rapper Doc Brown, and giving Cinderella the catchy original pop ballad “Million To One.” It’s the same proudly anachronistic spirit that animated A Knight’s Tale , heightened to Broadway musical fever dream proportions—although, sadly, not to the sublime levels of Moulin Rouge!
The Pitch Perfect creator has, perhaps unsurprisingly, reimagined Cinderella as a karaoke jukebox musical, with hints of Moulin Rouge! and The Greatest Showman abounding.
Cinderella (2011): This TV adaptation transports the classic fairy tale to Rome in the 1950, and centers on a pianist named Aurora.
Needless to say, there’s no musical moment here as magnificent as Whitney and Brandy singing Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “Impossible,” nor one as quietly lovely as Cinderella and the prince dancing to the underrated “So This Is Love” in the 1950 animated Disney version.
Various references to Vin Diesel and The Fast And The Furious are thrown into the mix.
Female audiences deserve their own sex comedies too and, along with Greta Gerwig’s aforementioned film and last year’s underrated Blockers, it looks like we’re finally getting the progressive coming-of-age films we need right now.
You have to pick through the debris to find movies like last year’s Blockers or 2016’s The Edge of Seventeen .
Like last year’s woefully under-appreciated prom-night romp Blockers , Wilde’s film flips the conventions of the crude teen comedy.
Lady Bird and The Edge Of Seventeen announced their directors as filmmakers to watch, while Blockers put the lie to the idea that it’s impossible to be both sensitive to changing social mores and laugh-out-loud funny at the same time.
Recent notable films such as Eighth Grade , Blockers , The Edge of Seventeen to older gems Mean Girls and Clueless have realistically captured the topsy-turvy essence of complicated female growing pains.
In recent years, the coming-of-age genre has been a goldmine of riches, with terrific films like Lady Bird , Eighth Grade , Blockers and The Edge of Seventeen perfectly capturing what it means to be a female teen in the 21st century.
Cena is game for anything; he reminded me a little of Arnold Schwarzenegger from some of his comedies (Twins and Kindergarten Cop), albeit without the accent.
Good Boys , in a very 2019 touch that recalls lasts year’s Blockers , even tosses in dialogue about the importance of consent and respect for women.
Other raunchy teen comedies, like Blockers and Superbad, have multiple characters traversing their own arcs to provide different setups for a variety of jokes.
It's one of the reasons why films like last year's Blockers and this year's Booksmart have been so enthusiastically received: Audiences are tired of watching teenage boys get drunk and fumble their way through hook-ups.
Along with the recently-released “Blockers,” it’s truly remarkable to see these comedies that Rogen and Goldberg are shepherding that are populated equally by women, people of color, and LGBTQ characters.
Horny hits like American Pie and last year’s Blockers are, at heart, sweet coming-of-age stories, secretly reassuring everyone that the kids are all right—that no matter how many f-bombs they drop, no matter how raunchy their MPAA-antagonizing hijinks get, they’re really just fumbling their inexperienced way through normal rites of passage.
Marking the directorial debut of Kay Cannon, the American writer behind the Pitch Perfect franchise, Blockers is an above average comedy that’s easy to engage with.
The crucial difference is this film, directed by Pitch Perfect’s screenwriter Kay Cannon, gives parents and their daughters equal screen time.
Then I read Lindsey Bahr’s piece on Kay Cannon (known for the Pitch Perfect franchise, as well as TV shows like 30 Rock, New Girl and Girlboss) and it all made sense: “Cannon took the script, which had only been worked on by male writers and executives when she signed on, and infused it with a more modern, sex-positive and feminist spirit,” Bahr explains.
It would have been easy for the girls to get slotted into stereotypes — the pretty one, the smart one, the jock — but brothers Jim and Brian Kehoe’s screenplay, in the hands of director Kay Cannon (a former 30 Rock writer who also wrote the Pitch Perfect screenplays), mostly resists the impulse.
What an outstanding directorial debut for Kay Cannon — making the leap from writing profitable Pitch Perfect installments to shaping dramatic moments as disarming as the laughs are large, and for both veteran actors and impressive new faces.
Even the Seth Rogen–versus–Zac Efron throwdown Neighbors reconciled with its slightly retrograde nature by letting women run wild in its sororal sequel Neighbors 2. Blockers, helmed by first-time director Kay Cannon (the woman who wrote the Pitch Perfect movies), gets it right the first time around, proving that a 2018 sex comedy can still be shocking and hilarious while checking off all the woke boxes.
Among the recent examples of these positive efforts is 2013’s massive hit Frozen, which re-imagined the classic, damsel-in-distress Disney princess by giving her agency, and redefined true love by focusing on sisterly bonds.