101 Dalmatians

I admit I was dubious, and with good reason. Re-makes are a bad idea more than 90% of the time. And remaking a classic animated film as live action? I went in expecting to dislike it, and I ended up enjoying it quite a lot. Glenn Close did a wonderful job of portraying my love, Cruella De Vil. (I just discovered that my darling Cruella was rated by the Disney company in 2005 as the #1 villain of all time! Let’s hear it for the Great Ms. De Vil!) Her outfits are outrageous, and her evil, insane laugh can rank right up there with the best of the Disney Villainesses. The dogs don’t talk, and I think that was a wise decision. There have been several live-action talking dog movies, and I don’t recall liking any of them. It works in pure animation; it stinks with CGI lip-sync. Hugh Laurie is as good as usual as one of the inept dognappers, and I always enjoy Joan Plowright, though I have to wonder how this young couple who appear to be just scraping by can afford a nanny. They don’t even have any kids. Oh, well, never mind. A large source of fascination for me was what must have been the monumental job of training and handling so many dogs and other animals. There were some animatronics, and some puppets from the Jim Henson factory, and I spotted a little bit of CGI, but mostly it was real dogs. The leads, Pongo and Perdy, seem to have each been played by two dogs, which must have been a make-up challenge to match the spots! And the real title could have been 217 Dalmatians, as that is how many hounds they used.

These spotted mutts have been a real cash cow for Disney over the years. There was this movie, and a sequel, 102 Dalmatians (which was badly reviewed, but I might want to see it just for Cruella), an animated television series, a video game, and—I could hardly believe this—a Broadway musical. How would they do that? I wondered. Well, it turns out the human characters were on stilts to make them bigger than the humans who were playing the lead dogs. The puppies were played by children, though there were 15 actual trained dogs in the cast, too. I’d like to see that, but I don’t think many local theater groups are likely to tackle it.