102 Dalmatians Movie Review:

            102 Dalmatians is a horrible sequel to what was a good storyline with the original Disney film.  The film opens with the evil dog snatcher Cruella De Vil (Close) being rehabilitated to love puppies, not hate them or wanting to kill them.  She is psychiatrically reevaluated and paroled from prison.  Her parole officer is Chloe (Evans), who is the owner of the Dalmatian Dipstick.  Her pet was one of the many Dalmatian puppies that Cruella tried to make a fur coat out of in the first film.  Chloe doesn’t trust Cruella’s suddenly sweet ways and tries to keep her dogs a distance away from her.  One thing leads to another and Cruella snaps back into her old self.  With the help of a fur fashion designer named Jean Pierre (Depardieu), she plans to steal Dipstick’s newborn puppies and many other Dalmatians to make the fur coat that she has been yearning for a long time. 

            102 Dalmatians is not an enjoyable family film at all.  There is absolutely no flow or much of anything in it except a few cute dogs. 

            Kevin Lima tries, but poorly directs the film.  The most aggravating part of this film is how many times Lima uses computer-generated Dalmatians.  I can understand him using the technology on objective shots of all 102 of the Dalmatians, but not on single close ups.  An example is the only Dalmatian without spots named Oddball.  Oddball is computer generated most of the time throughout the film, I could tell by seeing an outline around her mouth and ears.  This whole aspect just seemed ridiculous to me.  What is going to happen next, will films have computer generated extras, which are more expensive to make than to pay actors.  Well I take that back, we have already seen computer generated extras in films and I believe we see more as the future approaches. 

            Kristen Buckley’s script for the film isn’t much better.  The writer doesn’t even come close to capturing the magic of Dodie Smith’s original story of the Dalmatians and Cruella De Vil.  The script just gets out of hand and reflected to be screaming for rewrites.  Also, Buckley decided to bring in a parrot character that talks all the time and thinks he is a dog.  This character is very annoying and substantially unoriginal.  Her script also seemed to be rushed and thrown together in a matter of weeks.

             Glenn Close once again serves well as the intimidating and evil Cruella De Vil.  However, with the first film, the talent actress had more to work with, she does what she can with this performance.  Newcomer Alice Evans seems to hold her on well as actress with her performance as Chloe.  The true lackluster of the cast is an actor that a usually like named Gerard Depardieu.  He plays the loud fashion designer named Jean Pierre, who plans to help Cruella create her Dalmatian coat.  Honestly, Depardieu just overdoes the role with an annoying fake roar of laughter.

             Like I said before, I really didn’t like 102 Dalmatians, I thought it lacked a lot of precision.  Will kids watch it?  Maybe so, the dogs are so adorable, when they are real.

Joseph C. Tucker

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