101 Dalmatians (Limited Issue)
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List Price: $34.99
Features
• Animated
• Closed-captioned
• Color
• Dolby
• DVD-Video
• THX
• NTSC
In Theaters : 1961
DVD Release : 09 November, 1999 |
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101 Dalmatians (Limited Issue) description
Back in 1961, Walt Disney got a little hip with 101 Dalmatians, making use of that flat Saturday morning cartoon style that had become so popular. The result is a kitschy change in animation and story. Pongo and Perdita are two lonely dalmatians who meet cute in a London park and arrange for their pet humans to marry so they can live together and raise a family. They become proud parents of 15 pups, who are stolen by the dastardly Cruella De Vil, who wants to make a fur coat out of them. Cruella has become the most popular villain in all of Disney; she's flamboyantly nasty and lots of fun. But it's the dalmatians who shine in this endearing classic, particularly those precocious pups. Telling the story from the dogs' point of view is a clever conceit, a fundamental flaw of the live-action remake. --Bill Desowitz |
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101 Dalmatians (Limited Issue) Customer Reviews
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♥♥♥♥♥
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Marvelous restoration of a Disney classic
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This new Platinum Edition of Disney's 101 DALMATIANS is a great DVD set, but let me start off with an ongoing beef I have with the Disney Company. Will you guys stop putting the previews at the beginning of all your DVDs?! It is irritating even the first time you watch the DVD, but it gets inconceivably tiresome the 30th or 40th time your kid watches the disc.
Here is what I had to go through to avoid seeing these intrusive and unwelcome previews: first I kept hitting a combo of skip to the next chapter and hitting the menu button. Once I finally got to the main menu, it is essential NOT to hit the option to play the movie. That will just kick you back to the previews. What you have to do is go to the chapter menu and select the opening credits. That is apparently the only way to avoid all the commercials . . . uh, I mean previews.
Apart from that one failure, this is a great pair of discs. The restoration is incredible. When my daughter was younger we had this on VHS, but the difference in quality between that and this is eye popping. The sound is also pristine and pure. Let me add that if you have pets, this will definitely get a reaction. In the scene where Pongo barks to notify the Great Dane about his missing puppies, barking for a few minutes follows. My cats were actually, truly alarmed. I can only imagine the reaction of a dog.
101 DALMATIANS is a lovely film, but to be honest, it is more a film for kids than for grown ups. There really are three kinds of animated films: 1) those that primarily appeal to children, 2) those that appeal to children and adults, and 3) those that appeal mainly to adults. Miyazaki's SPIRITED AWAY is a great example of 2, while Satoshi Kon's PARANOIA AGENT is an example of 3. 101 DALMATIANS is an example of 1. For adults, this is going to be more enjoyable watching it with a child than watching it either alone or with other adults. Having said that, this is an incredibly good movie for kids. My daughter was a huge fan during the VHS era and we even had a sizable collection of the various dogs. I know she had a Pongo and a Lucky, and I believe we had one or two others as well.
For me the real joy of the set is the second disc. There are a host of wonderful special features that add a great deal to appreciating the particular achievement of the film. For instance, I was fascinated to learn that this was the first film to use the Xerox process. Sadly, it was also the first film to dispense with Disney's army of pencillers and colorists and there is no question that for a couple of decades Disney films simply were not as lovely. This film actually looks a lot better than several that followed, like the truly ugly ROBIN HOOD. The features explain that the switch to the Xerox process, while in many ways lamentable, was also inevitable. It meant that they could make animated films that were still high quality, but with a considerably smaller budget. The only other option would have been to stop making animated films entirely. I was also interested to learn -- something I should have known but didn't -- that this was the first Disney film not set in a fantasy setting, but instead set in a contemporary time and place. Even though "contemporary" here means the early 1960s, it retains that feeling of being "now" rather than "once upon a time."
I also love the credit that the various features give to the great Bill Peet. I've been very conscious of his contribution to the major Disney films for quite some time, but too often other individuals at the Disney Company seem to have received more attention. I think the features here will help correct that some. As one commentator points out, today a Disney movie will have up to 15 people working on the story. Bill Peet did the same thing all by himself. And he was instrumental in character design. They offer many shots of storyboards Peet produced and it is clear that a great deal of his vision was transferred to the screen. One person points out that his storyboards were hardly deviated from through the entire film. You need only see his drawings of Cruella De Vil to appreciate how crucial he was to the production. Three others were listed as director, but Peet was clearly the heart of the film.
There are also some games that I'm sure small children will find fascinating. My daughter loved computer programs that would allow her to adopt and care for a pet and that is one of the games included here.
I do have one complaint. For us adults, I would have enjoyed a commentary. There are some pop ups you can look at if you rewatch the film, but I would have appreciated something going into more depth. One last thing. The film was originally made in the standard 1.33:1 ratio, but matted for widescreen in theaters. I do not have a widescreen television, but one non-widescreen TVs this should appear as a "full screen" DVD.
All in all, this is a terrific new release. I would have liked a commentary track and would have been ecstatic if they had decided not to force those commercials on us, but overall it does a good job of providing a highly entertaining movie for kids while providing some additional features that will interest adults. And if you have kids, this would definitely fall into the "must get" category. |
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101 Dalmatians (Limited Issue) dvd movie.