101 DALMATIANS
A film review by Scott Renshaw
Copyright 1996 Scott Renshaw
(Disney) Starring: Glenn Close, Jeff Daniels, Joely Richardson, Hugh Laurie, Mark Williams, Joan Plowright. Screenplay: John Hughes, based on the novel by Dodie Smith. Producers: John Hughes and Ricardo Mestres. Director: Stephen Herek. MPAA Rating: G (cartoon violence). Running Time: 103 minutes, plus 7 minute short in some theaters. Reviewed by Scott Renshaw.
Resolved: Trained dogs are cute, and puppies scampering about are even cuter. If you would take the con position in an Oxford-style debate on this point, then the live-action remake of Disney's 101 DALMATIANS is not going to be your cup of kibble. 101 DALMATIANS was made not simply with an awareness of the usefulness of cute animals in the making of a family film; it seems to have been constructed around that awareness. There is such a crass calculation to the use of its canine stars as bringers of innocent grins that the dogs don't even counteract the brain-damaging slapstick which is John Hughes's stock-in-trade. Somehow, they make it worse. Delivered for the holiday season in a big glossy bow, 101 DALMATIANS is a spectacularly packaged box of foul-smelling air.
The story begins with two dalmatians and their owners living blissfully unaware of each other in London. Roger Dearly (Jeff Daniels), an American software designer who has made a pilgrimage to that noted video game mecca of London, shares a flat with his male dalmatian Pongo; fashion designer Anita Campbell-Green (Joely Richardson) has a female named Perdy. When Pongo and Perdy fall in puppy love, their humans are brought together, and soon both pairs form couples. The result of the dalmatian infatuation is a litter of puppies, which comes as wonderful news to Anita's fur-obsessed boss Cruella DeVil (Glenn Close), who intends to turn dalmatian fur into a beautiful coat. Cruella sets her henchmen Jasper (Hugh Laurie) and Horace (Mark Williams) to the task of dog-napping Pongo and Perdy's fifteen puppies, and those fifteen join another 84 puppies already captured. It is up to a slew of resourceful animals to reunite puppies with parents and thwart Cruella's dastardly plans.
The 1961 animated version of 101 DALMATIANS was far from the best of Disney's self-proclaimed "masterpieces," but it had a low-key charm even in the bumblings of Horace and Jasper. Now the material has been entrusted to writer-producer John Hughes, whose basic film-making philosophy is "If more is better, and even more is even better, then please-make-it-stop too much is just right." Roger and Anita's initial meeting is punctuated not by one careening chase sequence and bicycle wreck into a pond, but two; Horace and Jasper don't just fall through rotted floors and into freezing water, but also electrocute their gonads on a high-voltage fence. Even the magnificent, maleficent Cruella is not safe from the onslaught of indignities, falling first into a vat of molasses and then into a pile of manure. It is a sign of Hughes's love affair with "America's Funniest Home Videos" humor that he replaces the original's most memorable suspense sequence -- the puppies' attempt to slip past Cruella disguised as black labradors -- and replaces it with a scene in a barn which ends with a pig landing on Cruella's chest.
Glenn Close has obvious fun as Cruella, playing her as an imperious drag queen, but I'm mystified by raves for her performance. There is no doubt that Close can be scary -- she scared a generation of married men into zipping up their pants in FATAL ATTRACTION -- but there is no malevolence in her characterization of Cruella. Disney's great villains were real threats, and they didn't take pratfalls; Cruella has Horace and Jasper so that _they_ can be the comic relief while she spooks the little ones. John Hughes and hack-for-hire Stephen Herek aren't comfortable with genuine villainy, so they have Cruella join her goons as dim-witted victims of HOME ALONE 3 mayhem. Close cuts a fine figure in Cruella's outrageous outfits and commanding some impressive sets, and she is about as intimidating as RuPaul.
Then there are those adorable puppies. There is no point arguing that kids and many adults won't enjoy the frolicking dalmatians, because they will. There are a few marvelously trained animals in 101 DALMATIANS, and they provide some amusing moments. You could also get the same reaction out of most kids if you sat them down in front of a home movie of puppies playing, or an old episode of "Those Amazing Animals," or even a Westminster Dog Show on ESPN2, because reaction to the dogs in 101 DALMATIANS is not based on any kind of plot requiring individual personality for the animal characters. Though the same kind of animatronic critters used in BABE are used in 101 DALMATIANS, the animals don't talk here. Not only does that make for some confusing narrative (one scene found several kids around me perplexed as to why Lucky was still in danger), but it makes the canine cast of 101 DALMATIANS little more than a big spotted blur. A certain kind of manipulative drama has long been called a "tear-jerker," and 101 DALMATIANS is the family film equivalent. It's an "awww-jeker," trotting out the adorable little puppies and having them yap at you until you begin to consider turning them into a coat yourself.
On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 spot removers: 3.
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