101 Dalmatians (1961) Review

Lucas Versantvoort / July 3, 2013

Spoilers!

The reason I like animated films like 101 Dalmatians is because they don’t take themselves too seriously. Two other Disney films like this one, The Aristocats and Jungle Book, are, not so coincidentally, made by the same director and (mostly) the same writing staff. I’m unaware if other Disney films were also made by them, but this trio of films represents the most fun I’ve gotten out of Disney.

            101 Dalmatians opens with Pongo, bored to death, looking out the window, while his owner Roger, his ‘pet’, is composing at the piano. Longing for a mate for both him and his ‘pet’, he arranges for Roger to meet a woman called Anita and her Dalmatian Perdita. In typical Disney fashion, they get married before you can say Bob’s your uncle. Perdita eventually gives birth to fifteen puppies. That’s when Cruella De Vil pops her head around the corner and decides she wants the puppies' skins for a new fur coat. When Roger and Anita obviously refuse, she hires Horace and Jasper to ‘dognap’ them. Roger, Anita and the police are unable to find the lost puppies and so it is up to Pongo and Perdita to track them down with help from the rest of the animal kingdom.

            If there’s one thing that pops to mind when critiquing 101 Dalmatians, it’s the quality of the animation. I’m not too sure of the history, but it looks like it was financially impossible to pump too much money in the animation department. Backgrounds are sometimes monotone and lack depth. Several types of animations also repeat throughout the film, such as Pongo running (to the right) which is not only repeated once or twice, but sometimes even obviously mirrored (with Pongo running to the left).  But theses technical details are easy to forgive, because of the humor which is quite often of the adult kind. No kid watching this will ever see the horse and the dog from the barn as military satire.

            Also amusing is the subtext of humans being more like dogs than one might think. This is not necessarily new. In fact, it’s about as old as Darwinism, but it’s pleasant that we’re not hit over the head with this message. There’s no grand monologue on how humans must realize they are more animal-like than they’d like think. Instead, it subtly reoccurs through imagery and dialogue. Pongo refers to Roger as his ‘pet’ multiple times. Also cute is when De Vil accidentally sprays Roger with ink, making him visually similar to a Dalmatian.

            101 Dalmatians and similar films like The Aristocats and Jungle Book represent Disney at its most humorous. Gone are the overtly grand moral statements (‘when you wish upon a star’), something which 101 Dalmatians is not interested in. Instead, watching it feels more about having a good time. Consequently, this might not make it one of Disney’s best, but the humor and its not-too-serious nature more than make up for it.