I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

Sorry, this movie sucks

Blistering performances.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

101 Dalmatians (1996): Dir: Stephen Herek / Cast: Glenn Close, Jeff Daniels, Joely Richardson, Joan Plowright, Hugh Laurie: Pathetic live action version of the animated Disney classic is a complete failure with lavish production. It regards quantity as these dogs band together to survive. Jeff Daniels and Joely Richardson own two Dalmatians that give birth to fifteen pups and the evil Cruella DeVil wishes to make fur coats out of them. The dogs are a disappointment since they do not talk as they did in the animation. One would think that after the success of Babe that this wouldn't be a problem. This film contains none of the suspense or detail of the animated classic, which makes the plot here seem very basic. It was as if the makers thought that making a live version was enough but without those important details of the animation it just comes off as bland with only an effective villain to carry it. Director Stephen Herek doesn't heed details from the animation. This ranks with The Mighty Ducks as among Herek's worst efforts. Glenn Close steals the film with her icy performance as DeVil making her the film's best asset. Daniels and Richardson sleepwalk through bland roles with Joan Plowright as their maid. Hugh Laurie and Mark Williams play the idiotic henchmen nabbing the dogs. It is yet another bad adaptation that turns into a big budget dog show. Score: 2 ½ / 10

101 Dalmatians was a bland, inadequate, and completely dissatisfying live-action remake of the charming 1961 animated feature film of the same name - Both from Disney Studios.101 Dalmatians starts its story off as a horribly contrived boy-meets-girl tale where the thing that brings these 2 sappy people together is that each is the proud owner of a dalmatian dog - His is a male - Hers is a female. (Now, isn't that just too corny for words, or what?) 101 Dalmations' biggest and most damaging deficit was actress Glenn Close, as the ruthless fashion-house owner, Cruella De Vil. Close was truly terrible at this sort of Comedy. Her annoying, over-the-top, scenery-chewing antics weren't even in the least bit amusing, only nasty and just plain awful. Her despicable character quickly wore out its welcome within the very first hour of this picture.101 Dalmatians was the sort of story where the animals appear to be more intelligent and resourceful than their human counterparts. It wasn't until this film's last 45 minutes that these mighty clever beasts (dogs, raccoons, horses, and birds, alike) eagerly took their heroic part and ingeniously pulled together in order to help rescue the 99 dalmatian puppies from their deadly confines at Cruella's posh Suffolk estate.Through all of this strife one really had to wonder about the rationality and sanity of the ludicrous Cruella character who wanted more than anything in the whole, wide world - A full-length coat fashioned out of dalmatian puppy pelts. It was really quite unsettling to see what a kick Cruella got out of the thought that once she had her coat of dog hair, she'd actually be wearing her employee's dogs.Now, I ask you - Is that not just too unfunny and demented for words, or what??

I think this is one of those films from the 90s I saw as a kid, but when years have passed, I took one more view of this film again. Besides I knew it couldn't be possibly worse than the earlier movies that the late John Hughes made in the classic 90s.Boy was I wrong. Never have I been so disappointed in this mediocre remake, but I don't think it's the worst movie ever made. Let me point out the stronger points.The cast is pretty tolerable. Jeff Daniels and Joely Richardson did alright as Roger and Anite Dearly. Joan Plowright also did alright as Nanny. Hugh Laurie and Mark Williams did very good as Jasper and Horace, I think, but arguably the best performance throughout the entire film goes to Glenn Close who did such a compelling job as Cruella De Vil.The visuals are very amazing that looked exactly like the Disney cartoon and successful details the look of London, Roger and Anita's house and Cruella De Vil's mansion. Gotta give the director some credit for doing such a great job for visualizing them perfectly. That's it for my praise.The reason why I became so disappointed is because the screenplay was made by the late John Hughes who also wrote screenplays for such great films like the first two Home Alone films, the National Lampoon movies, Pretty in Pink, Breakfast Club and many more, but his career went downhill in the 90s when he wrote screenplays for such great disappointments like Dennis The Menace, Baby's Day Out, Just Visiting, the Miracle on 34th Street remake, and Flubber. In here, his screenplay has pathetically contrived dialogue and inconsistently unfunny humor that seemed too childish.The story is unbelievably predictable. It potentially has some great atmosphere in some of the scenes, but since this a remake of one of the greatest Disney films ever made, we all know what's gonna happen next and the second half becomes repetitive.If young kids want to see this mediocre remake of a Disney classic, be my guest, but only if they enjoy Glenn Close's performance. Otherwise, even that doesn't save this remake from it's incoherent plot and unfunny childish humor.4/10

Live action remakes of animated features almost always wind up being risky affairs. Disney's 101 Dalmatians, a live action version of its classic animated feature, goes well beyond risky and straight into idiotic territory. This jumbled mess of a film is only noteworthy for the animal acting and for an over-the-top Glenn Close performance that gets worse by the second. Unfortunately, even those rare elements of slight interest get glossed over by CGI and a ridiculous set of sequences that turns the minimalistic joy of the original into nothing more than chaotic clutter.101 Dalmatians strips all the elements from the animated feature for the sake of laziness, it seems, and what we're left with is a completely unnecessary project that demonstrates Disney's unfortunate unwillingness to fully commit to a film with heart. This Stephen Herek-directed movie "updates" the formula and adds a couple of dumb chase sequences to fill time, giving us characters that we don't care about and putting them in situations that cheerlessly mangle the original plot.Roger Dearly (Jeff Daniels) is a video game designer. He's an obvious update on the song-writing Roger out of the animated version and this proves problematic right away: there's no excuse for the famous and awesome Cruella de Vil song. In any event, Roger has a dog genius named Pongo. Pongo's pretty bright, but we have no idea what's going on in his canine head because there's no internal dog monologue. The key element that made One Hundred and One Dalmatians so fantastic is, alas, missing.Roger meets Anita (Joely Richardson) in the park after a disastrous and apparently hilarious pair of chase sequences because one wasn't enough to set up things. They do what any sensible people do after getting thrown into a park's lake and get married immediately. Also, they both have Dalmatians and now Pongo has a lover. The cuddly dog scenes show us they love each other. Aww. Anita works for Cruella de Vil (Close) a bizarre fur-loving weirdo with designs on the puppies Anita and Roger's doggies eventually have. You know the rest.Stunningly, this live action version of Dodie Smith's story was penned and produced by John Hughes. Yes, that John Hughes. How he managed to mangle such a simple story is beyond me, but he sure did a number on this one. For starters, this version sticks the humans squarely in charge of things and then jettisons them for the last act so that we get a musically driven dog's rescue sequence that eliminates the brilliance of the original because we can't hear what they're saying to each other.The best parts of the animated version are, therefore, gone. The barking of the dogs becomes a bunch of noise and the overwhelmingly invasive Michael Kamen score keeps meddling and telling us what we're supposed to feel. As much as I dislike the premise of talking animal movies, Disney's remake could have used a voice or two from the kingdom of the canines.Because the dogs lack voices and because we're focused on the dumb, boring humans, we don't really ever connect when the dogs go missing. The sequences that the animated version used to so lovingly attach us to Pongo and his family are gone, replaced by a grand "naming of the dogs" sequence that really only identifies the dogs by physical traits. This is another problem that could have been solved by having the dogs speak.Of course, having animals speak in these sorts of movies usually suffers from the fact that talking animals generally look stupid. But Disney doesn't seem to have any concern of that because they use copious CGI anyway, "fleshing out" the actions of the dogs and other animals when the trained canines can't do the trick. The discrepancy here is abundantly and embarrassingly clear, as it's hard to mask the sudden appearance of a CGI puppy heading down a slide into the snow. The large group shots of the puppies also shine with the clumsy computer-assisted stuff.In the end, 101 Dalmatians is a waste of time. While some may find value in the Glenn Close performance and some of the animal stuff, it wasn't enough for me. The movie is amazingly lazy, even by Disney's modern standards. The invasive score, the poor CGI and the bland performances from Daniels and Richardson make this a film to avoid like a creepy canine with rabies. And don't even get me started on the tragic absence of the beloved Sergeant Tibbs!