101 Dalmatians (1961)

Based in a novel from 1956 of the same name, 101 Dalmatians is a man-dog love story with some cool little touches that make for a very fun and original movie. The story presents the parallel perspectives of both the dogs and their owners, only that from the dog’s point of view it is the dogs that own the people rather than the other way around. Dogs are given another leg up (get it?) in that they are aware of both what other dogs and humans are saying while the humans are forced to make guesses like an episode of Lassie. I guess you can say that the dogs of 101 Dalmatians are super-anthropomorphized. I normally don’t care much for anthropomorphized animals but this movie has enough charm and good intentions that I let it slide.

Roger and Pongo, a human and a male dalmatian respectively, are a couple of bored bachelors living together in London until a not-so-chance meeting in the park, staged by Pongo, leads to a romance with a dalmatian named Perdita and her human, named Anita. A narration moves all of this along very quickly and we see that Anita and Roger are now married and that their dogs are having puppies....a huge litter of fifteen to be exact. This news gets the attention of a strange associate of Anita’s, a haggard socialite named Cruella De Vil (get it? Cruel Devil!), who excitedly offers to buy the entire litter. For what purpose? So that she can make a coat out of their soft little puppy fur. Obviously the answer is no, but Cruela won’t take no for an answer and so she resorts to dognapping which results in a full scale animal rescue filled with charm and humor.

If the story is virtuously simple it is only bolstered by the charming if not very well developed characters. In a movie with this many characters that would be a hard thing to accomplish indeed. However, Cruella is actually a particularly brilliant character in this movie. She starts off appearing as a smiling and well “polished” friend of the family but after she reveals her cruel intentions she is shown to be increasingly and frenetically evil until she becomes, or reveals herself, to be a crazed monster who will stop at nothing to get her way. She has a huge amount of screen time and is one of the most fun and most menacing Disney villains ever. When she finally gets her comeuppance, and you know she does, you can practically taste the justice dripping in your mouth....and it tastes a little like awesome. Or is that adrenaline? Or have I been drinking coffee too late in the afternoon again?

Animation wise, this movie is an interesting mile stone for Disney. Sleeping beauty, released in the 50s, had been a painful box office bomb since in it’s stylistic splendor it had cost too much to produce the old fashioned way. Indeed, ever since the animation strikes of 1941 and the consequent increase in production costs and the loss of 50% of the animators, Disney had found it virtually impossible to replicate the visual splendor of Snow White or Pinocchio. In order to find a way to reduce the cost of animated films and increase profitability, Ub Iwerks, the co-creator and original animator of Mickey Mouse, pioneered a way to utilize xerox technology to drastically cut down on the labor of hand drawn animation. 101 Dalmatians is the first movie to ever use xerography and, in fact, probably would not have been possible without the new technology since animating 101 individual dalmatians by hand would have been entirely too cumbersome. Yes, there are in fact 101 dalmatians in the movie, if you haven’t seen it. But then I’m wasting my breath because you, who have not seen it, are still living in a monastery high in the mountains and therefore you will not read this either. Pray for me brother.

Xerography and the move toward more angular lines on characters completely overhauled the Disney animation style for the next two decades or so. You’ve probably noticed how similar the animation and look of Disney movies from the 60s are with those from the 70s and yet different from the 40s and 50s and it is specifically because of this technology. The unfortunate thing is that, while fitting for this movie, xerography is far from perfect and it tends to leave a very unpolished look to the final product. Disney himself wasn’t really worried anymore about making perfect animated movies though, especially after Sleeping Beauty. His near complete devotion from 1950 or so on was the building, maintenance and expansion of Disneyland....and we all know how that turned out. Yeah, unfreaking believably awesome.

So it’s a technological first that represents a step or two back for animation. It’s got an original and interesting take on dog movies. It’s genuinely funny and the dialogue often very clever. It has one of the best villains who has a memorable song played about her in the movie (the one musical scene). It won’t blow you away but at the very same time what’s not to like? It’s one of the most popular Disney movies ever and it deserves most of the credit it gets.

I give it 3.8 black and white puppies