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

Old Yeller (1957)

I avoided watching this old time favorite until recently. I thought, “how could a movie about a boy who has to shoot his rabid dog be remotely interesting?” Well I was wrong, this movie really is interesting....remotely.

I saw it this last summer when I watched it in order to compile a “greatest Disney movie list” so I’m a little hazy on exactly what happened but just know that he does in fact shoot that dog, and everyone is very sad. You’ll be sad too.

The strongest point isn’t the story, which is ok, so much as the strong performance by Tommy Kirk who appeared in a number of famous Walt E. Disney era live-action movies such as the Swiss Family Robinson. He never had much of a career but he is almost universally admired by Disney nerds, and for good reason.

If you’ve never seen it, or heard of it, then know that Tommy Kirk plays the son of a Texas cattle rancher (Fess “Davy” Parker) who must leave his family for an extended period....to sell cattle I guess. During this hard time the rancher’s son (Tommy Kirk) finds a stray dog who provides the  family some comfort.....until the dog contracts rabies and becomes a threat to everyone. It’s not really a movie about a boy and his dog as much as it is about having to do hard things, as an adult, even if they go against your latent childish inclinations.

It’s not going to change the way you view the world, it’s not going to rock you with impressive visuals or memorable music, nor is it all that interesting outside of the fact that a boy has to shoot his dog. But it does tells a decent story, with a good moral, with stunningly consistent mediocrity.

I give it  3 out of 5.... citations for animal cruelty.

Lady and the Tramp (1955)

Almost all of the early Disney animated films were adaptations of fairytales or popular children’s literature. One odd exception is Lady and the Tramp, which is instead an original story conceived by  Disney legend Joe Grant who built the narrative up around the the observation that he and his wife stopped paying as much attention to their dog after their real baby was born. If this story would have been conceived of in today’s culture maybe the dog would have had a fair shot at familial supremacy but suffice it to say that, at the time, dog’s weren’t people....in fact, we can probably blame THIS movie, and all subsequent anthropomorphized dog movies for the fact that many are those among us who just can’t help but feel that their dogs ARE people. But let’s not worry about that right now.
 

Joe Grant played a major role in the creative development of some of Disney’s greatest movies, both old and less old.  He worked on Snow White, Pinocchio, Fantasia, and Dumbo early in his career, mainly as a story-boarder. Then he retired from Disney after WW2 to start his own business but eventually came back in 1989! What did he work on then? Beauty and the Beast, among other things. The guy lived until 2005 and even then he died while drawing in his studio. That’s dedication. I think.

Anyway, so this film is a story built around an amalgam of the insights of dog lover’s like Joe Grant and others hanging around the studio, like Walt Disney. The cute scene where John Dear gives his wife the puppy in a hat box for Christmas? Disney did the very same thing for his wife Lilian in real life. You get the idea. But the narrative isn’t just about a dog who feels saddened by her ontological position in relation to her owner’s newborn child but there is also a Tramp in there too and that aspect of the story was borrowed from an old story in Cosmo magazine about a mischievous yet charming stray dog who went about doing fun dog-like things. Disney bought the rights to the uncredited story and brought the idea to Grant as a way to incorporate a canine love interest for his dog story and, voila, Lady had her tramp. So, yes, this movie exists because two guys at Disney really, really liked their dogs. So what did all this misdirected affection get us as an audience? Something pretty charming. 

 

Lady is a groomed, upper middle class house dog learning to cope with altered familial dynamics after her owners, who had previously been strictly attentive to her, find themselves with better things to do (as I’ve said). Indeed she does come to terms with the new baby and, in fact, the family is not negligent of her after all. But at some point the owners have to go away on a trip, leaving Lady and the baby (yes, the BABY!) at home with cantankerous Aunt Sarah and her two racist Siamese cats, who happen to be singers and, like real cats, full of the devil. There is a grave misunderstanding, Lady is falsely accused and mistreated by Aunt Sarah and runs away where she finds more trouble being alone on the streets until she is finally helped by the charming though unpolished Tramp who takes her on his escapades. The rest of the story is essentially a strangely dramatic doggy romance that climaxes in an appropriately intense, though somewhat disjointed, moment of heroic redemption.

When this came out in 1955 it was at a time when the film critics, fickle and pompous hipsters that they all are, had turned on Disney for being too darned popular. Thus the critical consensus was that this movie was somehow of little artistic merit. Eons later, in the 21st century, it is generally universally acclaimed as a classic and the assertion is fitting. It’s way better than it should be for being the animated equivalent of that stupid “dogs playing poker” painting. You know the one. It’s right next to your portrait of a crying clown. You do have a portrait a crying clown, don’t you? Tell me I’m not the only one!

The animation itself is about as good as anything done before Disney’s death. The dogs move and act almost photo-realistically and yet emote human facial expressions brilliantly when engaged in inter-canine dialogue. The score is sweet and memorable; I sometimes hum “Bella Notte” when I’m drinking (I’d sing it if I spoke Italian).The story, though obviously ad hoc, is charming enough and the happy ending (you know there is one) well deserved. The characters are cute and even the doggy romance can’t be denied for being as touching and well developed as a doggy romance can be. Who doesn’t love the iconic scene where Lady and Tramp accidentally kiss while slurping the same noodle of spaghetti? Only a soulless monster.

It’s not Disney’s greatest movie but it is Disney’s second greatest movie about Dogs. I give it 3.6 bella nottes.