The last truly great animated film personally supervised by Walt Disney before his death, 101 Dalmatians ranks head and shoulders over other 1960s releases like The Sword in the Stone and The Jungle Book (later efforts also supervised by Disney) and was not surpassed by another animated Disney effort until The Little Mermaid over a quarter of a century later. Its undeniable quality, an animated comic thriller matched only in tension and heart by Pinocchio, found a ready audience in 1961 and in all of its subsequent theatrical reissues. In fact, for years it ranked as the studio’s highest grossing animated feature. Revisiting it now after a break of several years proves that the film has lost none of its charm, humor, or thrills. It truly deserves the Diamond Edition Blu-ray treatment it receives with this release. Available for over a year on Blu-ray in other regions, it’s finally been made available stateside in a combination Blu-ray/DVD release.
Studio: Disney
Distributed By: N/A
Video Resolution and Encode: 1080P/AVC
Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
Audio: English 1.0 DD (Mono), English 7.1 DTS-HDMA, Spanish 5.1 DD, Other
Subtitles: English, English SDH, Spanish, French
Rating: G
Run Time: 1 Hr. 19 Min.
Package Includes: Blu-ray, DVD, Digital Copy
keep case in a slipcoverDisc Type: BD50 (dual layer)
Region: ABC
Release Date: 02/10/2015
MSRP: $36.99
The Production Rating: 4.5/5
The stylized look chosen for 101 Dalmatians met with some criticism at the time of the original release since it was so different from the classic storybook animation of all of Disney’s past successes, but hindsight has enabled us to see its quality and appreciate it apart from the more elaborate and fluid animation of Bambi or Peter Pan. It’s a look as individual as the story itself, a dogs’ eye view of the world with highly static backgrounds and humans often grotesquely limbed and clothed. And the Xerox process perfected by longtime Disney contributor Ub Iwerks used to make the handling of all those spotted dogs feasible works to perfection allowing the animators to invest time and talent into giving many of these puppies real personalities paired with some terrific voice casting. At the same time, the animation storytellers haven’t spared the humor or the heart in the movie. A sequence where Roger brings a stillborn puppy back to life captures the nuances of emotion on both the human and dog faces to perfection, and the bumbling henchman of Cruella and her broad caricature of a witchy-like fiend are endlessly comical.
Rod Taylor was just coming into his own stardom around the time of this release, and he makes a sincere and steady Pongo, but the hit of the movie has to be the Tallulah Bankhead-esque vocal histrionics of Betty Lou Gerson as Cruella. The witchiest non-witch in the history of the Disney animated features, she’s a nightmarish delight sweeping into a room with her venal green cigarette smoke trailing along behind her, bowling over everyone in sight with her insulting opinions and uninhibited desires. And her huge red limousine careening around the countryside fits her oversized personality to perfection, barreling along ready to mow anyone or anything down that gets in her way. Ben Wright and Lisa Davis are sweet and spirited as Pongo and Perdita, and Fred Warlock and J. Pat O’Malley bray and grovel to perfection as Cruella’s “gang.”
101 Dalmatians relies less on songs than any other Disney animated movie up to that time. There are three numbers, but only one will stay with you: “Cruella De Vil” will haunt your psyche for days after watching this movie for the first or the one hundred and first time. As for the rest of the movie, the breathless, extended escape from the potential killers makes for a really tense number of climactic sequences, and the brilliant plotting by Bill Peet (based on Dodie Smith’s original book) keeps audience pulses racing as the escapees somehow manage to foil their own attempts continuously and of necessity must find other ways to elude capture. Mention should also be made of the most imaginative opening credits in Disney animated feature history up to that time. Superb animation, terrific voice acting, and a superlatively thrilling story combine to make 101 Dalmatians a true treasure in the Disney canon.
Video Rating: 4/5 3D Rating: NA
Audio Rating: 4/5
Special Features Rating: 4.5/5
Lucky Dogs (9:08, HD): several of the legends from Disney’s classic era of animation offer sound bites of their memories working at the studio, among them Rolly Crump, Floyd Norman, and Lisa Davis.
Dalmatians 101 (5:20, HD): The Disney Channel’s Cameron Royce (who will play Cruella’s son in a summer Disney release) offers five things that are cool about 101 Dalmatians.
Walt Disney Presents: “The Best Doggoned Dog in the World” (51:05, HD): a 1961 episode of the series which offered some teaser clips from the movie and also relates stories about other special dogs from around the world.
DisneyView: the user may choose to watch the movie with this feature turned on: art panels which replace the pillarboxing on either side of the picture.
Redefining the Line: The Making of 101 Dalmatians (33:55, SD): paean to the film by current Disney animation personnel along with archived interviews with many of the people responsible for making it. The documentary is divided into seven segments which can be viewed together or individually.
Cruella De Vil: Drawn to Be Bad (7:10, SD): a featurette mostly with animator Marc Davis talking about his work on this legendary villainess. We also see some stills of actress Mary Wickes who did the live action reference footage for the animators.
Sincerely Yours, Walt Disney (12:48, SD): an interesting feature on the correspondence between Walt and original author Dodie Smith with restaged excerpts from their back and forth communications over a period of years during the production of the movie.
Trailers and TV Spots (SD): there are trailers and TV spots for the 1961 original release (3 total), 1969 reissue (4 total), 1979 reissue (4 total), and one 1985 reissue trailer. There are 3 radio spots of varying lengths for the 1961 release, 6 for the 1969 reissue, and 3 for the 1979 reissue.
Music & More (SD): deals with the six songs that were either used in the film or written and discarded at various stages of the production. The deleted song (“March of the One Hundred and One” - 2:29) features the original dialog and singing audio track and the storyboards for the sequence. Two other cut songs are presented in demo form: “Cheerio, Good-bye” (2:32) and “Don’t Buy a Parrot from a Sailor” (2:39). For the three songs that actually appear in the movie, each has demo versions plus numerous takes of various actors attempting to put down suitable recordings (“Dalmatian Plantation" 2:45, 1:03) and “Kanine Krunchies” (nine versions totaling 5:14). Most interesting here is “Cruella De Vil” which features a spooky original (3:47) and a blues (2:15) version as well as actor Ben Wright trying to do his own singing as Roger (3:24). We then get several takes of famed voice double Bill Lee first trying to mimic Wright’s British accent and then opting to sing in his own voice (4:29). A honky tonk version (1:22) closes out the section.
Promo Trailers (HD): Aladdin, the live action Cinderella.
DVD/Digital Copy: code sheet and disc enclosed in the package.
Overall Rating: 4.5/5
Reviewed By: Matt Hough
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