Review of One Hundred and One Dalmatians (1961) by Sean L — 29 May 2017

A mad mistress gathers spotted puppies, including a freshly-stolen litter of fifteen from a small metropolitan family, to harvest their pelts and produce a line of fur coats. When the lost pups' parents send out a distress call, half the hounds of London take the case and the great chase begins.

The theme and tone are fitting for a Disney picture, retaining some of the fantasy elements that first brought the studio to fame, while continuing the lean in a slightly darker direction that would continue throughout the next thirty years.

Disney Animation had to cut some corners to make this one, after Sleeping Beauty underperformed at the box office, and many of those cost-saving measures show up in the finished product. Xeroxed and reused character animations are abundant, artwork often seems rushed and over-simplified, and the extensive use of rotoscoping is often distracting.

It's also a very short film, running just an hour and nineteen minutes with credits, and the story suffers for that brevity: villainess Cruella De Vil's great comeuppance seems short-lived and inconsequential, while the focal family's happy reunion comes off as narrow and happenstance.

There's also very little music in the picture, surprisingly so considering the human father's occupation as an always-working composer, which makes for a less jolly, wholesome vibe than one might expect.

It isn't bad - the core characters are charming and they're aided by a full, well-rounded supporting cast - but it does seem terribly shallow and borderline incomplete. The beginning of a difficult transition away from the days when the studio was churning out classics every other year.