Review: One Hundred and One Dalmatians

Dalmatian Pongo (voiced by Rod Taylor) tries to set his struggling songwriter master up with a woman, who has her own female Dalmatian named Purdita (voiced by Cate Bauer), and it’s a match made in heaven, not just for their respective owners, but for the dogs, too. Soon, fifteen Dalmatian pups are born, and while their masters are struggling to keep up with their finances, they refuse the interest of one Cruella De Vil (voiced by Betty Lou Gerson), who wants to buy the puppies for obviously nefarious purposes. Undeterred, Cruella has her two bungling minions kidnap the pups (minus their parents), throwing them with a larger litter of pups she has already acquired. It’s up to Pongo and Purdita to come to the puppies’ rescue and stop Cruella from turning them into a fur coat!

 

Continuing my look at Disney animated films throughout the years, this was the first time I had actually seen this 1961 film directors Clyde Geronimi (“Peter Pan”, “Lady and the Tramp”), Hamilton S. Luske (“Pinocchio”, “Alice in Wonderland”, “Peter Pan”), and Wolfgang Reitherman (“Sleeping Beauty”, “The AristoCats”). It’s not top echelon Disney animated fare (“Pinocchio”, “Peter Pan”, “Robin Hood”, “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs”, “Alice in Wonderland”, “The Jungle Book”), but it earns a healthy spot on the second tier (“Aladdin”, “The Lion King”, “The AristoCats”, “Sleeping Beauty”, “The Hunchback of Notre Dame”), possibly even leading that secondary pack of films. Similarly, the film’s chief villainess Cruella De Vil isn’t the all-time great Disney villain of a Captain Hook, Maleficent, or Wicked Queen, but she’s not far behind, and the only thing that pulls her back is the scant amount of screen time she gets. She’s otherwise a marvellous villain, and her car is the most brilliantly Satanic-looking thing I’ve ever seen. She also sports the biggest fur coat in the history of fur coats. I also really liked the very 60s opening titles design, it’s more the sort of thing you’d get in a Blake Edwards comedy than a Disney animated film, and it sets things apart from the pack.

 

The film’s strongest asset is definitely the animation. It’s a vibrantly coloured and beautiful-looking film, it’s one of the best-looking animated films of the pre-CG era by far. I think Disney have tried to recapture this angular, sharp look in some of their more recent output (“Hercules”, “Pocahontas”), but have failed miserably at matching this. I must also commend our Rod Taylor for trying on an English accent, though he comes closer to Cary Grant or Ray Milland than say, David Niven. He certainly doesn’t sound like himself, so I give him credit for trying something different and not sounding like his usual self. I do think that the title dogs all blend together, somewhat, the film would’ve benefitted from a few distinct personalities. That said, at least the Disney animation team have made them look far cuter than real Dalmatians tend to be. I’m much more of a pug person myself (I also like Labradors and Cavalier King Charles Spaniels, in case anyone gives a damn). However, as was the case in the later “Pocahontas”, Disney portrays pugs as snooty. Pugs are not in any way snooty. They are the friendliest dogs you could possibly find, as well as probably the dirtiest, to be honest. A little bit of research might’ve helped, guys. Another thing that really grated on me was the constant barking and howling. I know it’s a film about dogs, but it actually got really annoying after a while (If you’ve seen the film, you know exactly what I’m talking about). I also think the film suffers a bit in the midsection when the action drifts away from the title characters and Cruella onto other characters one found tedious (And annoying, due to the constant howling in this section). Also, as much as I’ve heard explanations for how my maths is wrong here, I swear there’s actually 116 Dalmatians in the film, not 101. There’s a scene where one of the dogs explains that there’s a group of ‘99 of us all together’, and then attention goes towards the original 15 puppies who only joined the 99 after being stolen. The dog says ‘We never counted them’. Therefore, those 15 puppies CAN’T be among the 99, because they were never counted. Either they never included them in the count of 99, or they never bothered to count how many of them there are (We know it’s fifteen). So, add the two parents and you get 116 Dalmatians! But later, when they are counted, the count ends at 101! Where are the missing 15 at the end of the film? It’s a conspiracy I tells ‘ya! C-O-N…spiracy! In order for the maths to be correct, there needs to be 84 stolen puppies, plus the 15 and their owners. That’s not how it is explained in the film.

 

It’s a lovely film and better than most Disney animated films that came after it. I wish I had seen it much sooner. However, it could’ve been even better with more Cruella and the puppies, and less of the other characters who frankly aren’t terribly necessary. The screenplay is by Bill Peet (“Fantasia”, “Alice in Wonderland”, “Peter Pan”), from a novel by Dodie Smith.

 

Rating: B-