101 Dalmations - 8.2/10
This movie holds a special place in my heart. It was my flu movie. As a
kid, whenever I was home sick from school and laid out on the couch,
this was the movie I would watch. Dunno why it got that way, but there
you have it.
This film also marks a huge turn for Disney in several ways: the choir
is gone (and I'm so sad about it), a creative opening title sequence,
the painstaking animation of the past has given way to the new cheaper
and easier methods including Xeroxed cels, and the art has shifted to a
much more "sketchy" style. Also, the story itself is far more complex
than anything they had attempted before. The first and last changes I
like, the others I'm not so sure of.
As for the movie itself, it definitely relies on the supporting cast.
Nothing against the main characters or anything, but my favorites were
always Roger, the gruff yet screwy old colonel, the brave and valiant
Sgt. Tibbs, and of course the villains. Cruella Deville is definitely
top ten material for Disney villains. I mean, her car alone is amazing.
Jasper and Horace, much like Hook and Smee, are bumbling and funny while
still being a legitimate threat to the protagonists. And of course
let's not forget that Cruella has what is quite possibly the most iconic
villain song ever.
The music in general was pretty good in this. A lot of jazzy numbers,
and the climax's bgm was pretty exciting, as were the visuals.
There were some technical flaws that I even noticed as a kid - mostly
just inconsistent animation. You'll be looking at one dog, and then in
the next frame it's a completely different dog, even though it's clearly
supposed to be the same one (sometimes this happens while the dog in
question is talking, leaving no room for doubt). Stuff like that. I
think the animators were just careless in a few places, and it goes back
to those cheaper animation methods I was talking about.
Part of my love for this film might simply be from nostalgia, but I've
done as good a job as I can to remain as objective as possible. This was
a good movie.
One long howl, two short, one yip and a woof!
This movie I personally lump in with all the "okay" Disney movies. I liked it as a child and as an adult there are good parts and Cruella definitely is a good villian, but it doesn't do anything special for me. I think part of this may be that I have a hard time separating my feelings for this film from the dastardly remake...
ReplyDeleteI didn't realize they xeroxed cels... That is interesting because I think that all the computer animated children's movies now look like crap (Pixar clearly excluded) and I recently heard that there are so many sequels because regardless of how an animated feature fares at the box office studios will go ahead and make more because it's cheaper for them to use the characters and scenery they have already created. I could bitch about this for awhile, but the xeroxed cels thing made me thing about it. Like xeroxed cels were the grandfather of ways to cut corners and compromise artistic value in animation.