The story of Cinderella — an orphan who is a servant for her stepmom and stepsisters before a prince sweeps her off her feet — has been adapted for the big screen many times over the years (including, most recently, in a 2015 live-action Disney version).

For the 2021Cinderella to make a place for itself among the rest, it needed to add previously unexplored features to the narrative. While the Kay Cannon version is a clear attempt at turning the tale into a story about feminism and girl power, it lacks direction.

Elle is a girl-boss with aspirations to break the glass ceiling (but not her glass slipper), and her biggest hurdle is that her stepmother doesn't want her to get hurt if her dreams come true.

Without a real villainous character, the plot falls flat, and it lacks a deeper meaning.

"Sony's adaptation, helmed by the genius (and we mean that) behind Pitch Perfect, strips Cinderella of the very real stakes that were the basis for the original tale: a life of abject poverty, indiscriminate cruelty, and no way out," Gabriella Geisinger wrote for Digital Spy. "Instead, the story is slapped with a coat of Hollywood-feminist shellac and gilded in a girl-boss attitude that means absolutely nothing except this: women are no longer allowed to be evil."