Disney's trip down memory lane, a live-action remake of its 1950 animated classic, is daring not so much because of the switch to flesh and blood, but because of its adherence to the original's now outmoded values.

In an age of irony, metatextuality and feisty female empowerment, this a very straight telling of the fairy tale about a good-hearted girl overcoming adversity to win her prince.

And, in fact, its conventionality feels like a glorious gust of fresh air. Directed by Kenneth Branagh with good-natured verve, smartly written and ravishingly designed, this is a captivating film that defies the po-faced.

Charles Perrault's fairytale has had its revisionist outings, notably Ever After in 1998, with Drew Barrymore's spirited heroine arguing about economic theory and civil rights with her royal suitor. Apparently Disney wanted none of that, determined to maintain Cinderella's suffering saintliness. Branagh and writer Chris Weitz have duly obliged.

First we're introduced to the country idyll of Ella's childhood, with her doting parents (Ben Chaplin and Hayley Atwell) and the animals with which she has a rare ability to converse. On her mother's tragically early deathbed, she insists that her daughter "have courage and be kind", which will become the motto for both heroine and film.

A few years later poor Ella (now played by Downton Abbey's Lily James) finds her courage and goodness stretched to breaking point when her father remarries, then himself dies, leaving her in the clutches of her stepmother Lady Tremaine (Cate Blanchett) and two awful step-sisters (Holliday Grainger and Sophie McShera).

Tremaine isn't cartoon evil but palpably materialistic: hedonistic and coldly pragmatic, with a hint of vulnerability, this elegantly attired social climber is more Cruella de Vil than Wicked Stepmother. Blanchett's rounded portrayal gives the film a bedrock from which it can make as much fancy as it pleases. And Branagh certainly knows how to put on a show, milking his performers and designers for all their worth. Production designer Dante Ferreti and costume designer Sandy Powell, both three-time Oscar-winners, produce work that takes the breath away.

While the plot is business as usual, each aspect has something pleasurable about it. Richard Madden, the ill-fated prince of Game Of Thrones, has better fortune here as the comely chap who falls for Cinderella, he and James making theirs a heady romance of equals in all but social status; Rob Brydon is a hoot as a court painter; Helena Bonham Carter doubles as the narrator and the toothily eccentric fairy godmother (or as she mispronounces it, "hairy dog father"), whose wonderfully comic magic heralds a costume ball that couldn't be more beautifully mounted or romantic, and for which Cinders' dress alone is a work of art.

Weitz has a mixed track record as a writer, but his work here equals his best, About A Boy, in its combination of humour and feeling. Much depends on our believing in the power of Cinderella's goodness; in this, director, writer and young star hold a steady course, to the point where it would be churlish not to succumb.

When Branagh burst onto the scene as an actor-director more than 25 years ago, one wouldn't have tagged him as someone who would make comic book action movies (Thor), spy thrillers (Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit) or indeed Disney films. But one can detect the seed of Cinderella in his Shakespearean romances, even in the style of his Hamlet. His Hollywood cachet is soaring.

Fans of Frozen will be happy to hear that Cinderella will be preceded by a delightful short animation, Frozen Fever.