No doubt there are worse ways for families to kill a couple of hours together over Thanksgiving, but pity the adults forced to keep the kids company through Netflix’s cloying, candy-colored musical fantasy, Steps. Simultaneously busy and sluggish, aggressively modern and tired, this charm-deficient Cinderella makeover squanders the considerable talents of a starry voice cast on lame dialogue laced with unfunny humor in a take on the classic fairy tale so convoluted that just following the plot becomes a chore.
Produced by Amy Poehler and co-directed by Alyce Tzue and John Ripa, Steps rehashes once-radical, now familiar tropes like the antagonist as hero and the bonds of sisterhood outweighing conventional romance. In other words, ho hum. The screenplay is credited to five writers and the story to six, originating with comedy folk duo Riki Lindhome and Kate Micucci, who go by the professional name Garfunkel and Oates. That outsize assembly feeds the impression of a project patched together by committee, sucking any spark or spontaneity or emotional uplift out of the material.
Steps
The Bottom Line
Strictly for tots through tweens.
Release date: Friday, Nov. 20
Cast: Amanda Seyfried, Ali Wong, Stephanie Hsu, Nikki Glaser, Daniel Radcliffe, Young Mazino, Peter Dinklage, Bette Midler, Damian Priest, Gwendoline Yeo, Matt Lowe
Directors: Alyce Tzue, John Ripa
Screenwriters: Ava Tramer, James Madejski, Jen Chuck, Dana Schwartz, Felicia Ho
Rated PG,
1 hour 41 minutes
The central conceit is that Cinderella’s stepsisters are not evil, just misunderstood. Punky teen Lilith (Ali Wong) is determined to set the record straight on what she calls the “character assassination” of the storybook tale, carving out her own “happily ever after,” while her younger sister Margot (Stephanie Hsu) is too sweet and innocent to be tainted by that traditional lore; she loves everyone, especially frogs.
When their dressmaker mother Li Mei (Gwendoline Yeo) falls in love and moves them to the kingdom of Alouette, Lilith sees it as a place where she might finally belong. Mom’s new husband Edmund (Matt Lowe) is kind and welcoming, as is his cheerful daughter Cinderella (Amanda Seyfried), with whom they form a fast friendship. But the sisters’ cheongsams and black hair instantly mark them as outsiders in their macaroon-hued new environment, at odds with the prevailing 18th century French rococo aesthetic. The abundance of pink hurt my eyes.
The bigger hurdle comes when they accompany Cinderella to a tea party hosted by vain mean girl Priscilla (Nikki Glaser), whose parents placed her in the hyper-protective care of sinister butler Roderick (Peter Dinklage). When Lilith starts entertaining the other guests with an exotic folktale, Priscilla perceives a threat to her Queen Bee domination. She tricks Lilith and Margot into entering a gated storm drain, where she locks them in. Cinderella is torn between loyalty to her mistreated stepsisters and the peer pressure of the popular kids. Naturally, she goes with the latter, which plants the festering seed of Cinderella’s betrayal.
Cinderella, by the way, is not condemned here to a life of drudgery. Instead, she obsessively cleans the house for her own pleasure, aided by a happy assortment of forest creatures. Either she’s a pathological neat freak or she’s seen Amy Adams in Enchanted a hundred times, not that it matters much.
When members of the court distribute invitations to a Royal Ball, Lilith and Margot are left off the list, to the gleeful mockery of Priscilla. They resign themselves to a quiet night at home while the rest of the town is partying. But when Lilith sees Cinderella being kitted out for the ball by her Fairy Godmother (Bette Midler), who has spent her life planning for the girl’s marriage to Alouette’s handsome Prince (Daniel Radcliffe), she hatches her own plan.
That involves snatching the Fairy Godmother’s wand and creating her own goth-glamour fantasy. Arriving in a skull-shaped black carriage that looks straight out of Tim Burton, Lilith and Margot crash the ball and liven up the party until disaster strikes.
When it starts looking like Cinderella in her glass slippers has the royal marriage sewn up, treacherous Priscilla gets hold of the wand. Priscilla uses her newfound magic to convince the Prince she’s his one true love, breaking the fairy tale. She sets the vicious Roderick — adopting the Tom Cruise sprinter style of intense concentration and rigid hands slicing the air — on the heels of Cinderella, Lilith and Margot, who gets turned into a talking frog during the confusion.
Will Cinderella be able to wind back the clock and get to the Prince by midnight, in time to prove she’s the one? Will she and Lilith patch up their differences and discover the rewards of true sisterhood? Will Margot revert to human form before losing herself as a frog? And will Lilith stumble onto her own true love when their journey through the woods takes them to the house of a hunky troll named Gef (Young Mazino), cast out by his mean brother Craktor (WWE star Damian Priest) for being too soft-hearted?
The answers are plain to see, but Tzue and Ripa spend an inordinate amount of time getting there as the forest odyssey drags on and the movie grows more stubbornly unmagical by the minute.
It’s a pleasure to hear Seyfried’s crystalline vocals on Justin Trantor’s original songs, and Midler is an old hand at cracking wise. But the distinguished voice cast mostly is given little to make their characters endearing, let alone enchanting.
The Asian elements carry through to the K-animation-meets-Disney character designs, with lots of round faces and saucer eyes, giving the impression that Netflix is trying to ride the KPop Demon Hunters wave; and to a poppy end credits song by Blackpink member Jennie. But the cross-cultural differences are too tentatively explored to gain traction, ultimately seeming kind of random and giving Steps a vibe that’s more ersatz than original. Still, children — young girls, especially — should be fine with that.