Channel J: The Three “101 Dalmatians II”s

Pop culture has been obsessed lately with how notorious villains became such in the first place, and/or in redeeming them.  The Wicked Witch of the West from The Wizard of Oz famously received this treatment with the debut of Wicked.  Disney tried this successfully with a pair of movies starring Maleficent, the villain from Sleeping Beauty.  Netflix reimagined Carmen Sandiego from a villain to a hero (and last week I argued that she was never a villain to begin with).

Disney’s dipping from this well again, perhaps in response to pop culture’s newfound obsession with DC character Harley Quinn.  Their upcoming movie Cruella is making the villain from The Hundred and One Dalmatians seem a Harley-like character, as suggested by the trailer.

Cruella is coming to theatres and Disney+ in a couple months, but this week I decided to explore the history of the Dalmatians franchise.

Did you know that there are three different but similar versions of The Hundred and One Dalmatians, and each came with one sequel, none of which are even remotely like the others?  There was the original book by Dodie Smith, an animated film adaptation by Disney, then Disney made a live action version of their animated adaptation.

 

The Great Dog Robbery (1956)

This is the original story, serialized in Women’s Day Magazine that would be published in novel form in 1956 as The Hundred and One Dalmatians.

At the start of the novel, we meet Pongo and his mate, Missis.  This pair of dalmatians live with their owners, whom they think of as their pets, the Dearlys, and Missis has puppies on the way.

The first chapter introduces us to most of the major characters of the book, including Nanny Butler and Nanny Cook, the pair of nannies who live with the Dearlys, and it also introduces the villain of the novel, Cruella de Vil.

Dodie Smith does a very good job of making Cruella out to be quite a monster of a character.  Mrs. Dearly mentions that they were in the same class at school until Cruella was expelled for drinking ink.  In the years since, Cruella married a furrier, if only because he’d be able to support her obsession with having furs.  When she’s introduced to Pongo and Missis…

“Wouldn’t they make enchanting fur coats?” said Cruella to her husband.  “For spring wear, over a black suit.  We’ve never thought of making coats out of dogs’ skins.”

Cruella actually owns a live cat, but states that she’d drown her if the cat weren’t valuable.  Her cat actually attempts to run away from home in chapter two to live with the Dearlys, but leaves when she hears the barking of Pongo.

Cruella’s also exceptionally proud of the motor horn she had installed into her car, and brags that “It’s the loudest horn in England.”

Smith best demonstrates the character of Cruella when she manages to have her demands to see the new puppies met.

“But they’re mongrels–all white, no spots at all!” she cried. “You must drown them at once.”
“Dalmatians are always born white,” said Mr. Dearly, glaring at Cruella. “The spots come later.”
“And we wouldn’t drown them even if they were mongrels,” said Mrs. Dearly indignantly.
“It’d be quite easy,” said Cruella. “I’ve drowned dozens and dozens of my cat’s kittens. She always chooses some wretched alley-cat for their father, so they’re never worth keeping.”
“Surely you leave her one kitten?” said Mrs. Dearly.
“If I’d done that, I’d be overrun with cats,” said Cruella. “Are you sure those horrid little white rats are pure Dalmatian puppies?”

However, despite her initial disgust at these puppies, she remains interested in them and in chapter four, manages to successfully kidnap them.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.  The puppies in question are born in the second chapter, a total of fourteen live pups and one stillborn.  Mr. Dearly manages to massage some life into the stillborn pup and thus a grand total of fifteen are born to Pongo and Missis.

However, a mother dog only has so much milk to give and certainly doesn’t have fifteen nipples, so a foster mother is sought to help take care of them.  Enter Perdita, a malnourished dog found dirty on the side of the road, having run away from her old home on a farm in search of her own lost puppies.  She hadn’t been taken care of very well after her litter of puppies were born and as a result she grew thinner and thinner, giving literally everything she had to make sure her pups would live.  One day, they were gone and she went in desperate search of them, ending up exhausted in a ditch.  Mrs. Dearly finds her, brings her home, makes sure she’s well fed, and even comes up with her name.

For a while, all is well, but then in chapter four, Cruella puts her plan to steal the pups in motion.  She waits until the Dearlys are out and distracts Nanny Cook while a pair of brothers named Saul and Jasper Baddun load the pups into their van and take off.

The entire family, both human and dog, are distraught.  After thinking it over, Pongo and Missis run away from home in search of their pups, thanks to information received during the Twilight Barking, and Perdita is tasked with staying home and keeping the Dearlys company.

The pups have been spotted in Suffolk, so that’s where Pongo and Missis run.  Along the way they receive help from dogs who heard about them in the Twilight Barking, and eventually they meet up with a cat named Pussy Willow (nicknamed Tib since most people call her that) and her companion, a sheepdog named The Colonel.  They live next door to where the pups are being kept, the de Vil manor most people call Hell Hall.

Up until now, Pongo and Missis have been operating under the assumption that the pups would be safe because they’re too small to make a coat, since even fifteen of them wouldn’t equal one coat, but upon arriving, they find out that Cruella’s been acquiring dalmatian puppies long before their fifteen and she’s accumulated close to a hundred over the course of several months, some of which are getting closer and closer to skinning size.  It’s been assumed she’s been stealing them all, but it’s later found out that only the final fifteen were actually stolen.  Cruella had been successful in buying all the others.

Pongo and Missis infiltrate Hell Hall in order to inspect the troops, so to speak.  The idea is to train the pups to march and follow orders a few at a time while the rest of the pups remain inside watching television with Jasper and Saul.  The smallest pup, Cadpig, would probably not like the training portion, since she’s found herself quite liking television.

However, villains have a way of ruining carefully laid plans.  Cruella has decided that, due to how much press the loss of the Dearly’s pups have been generating, all of the pups need to die that very night.  She’ll have her coat and a pair of lovely gloves, ship the rest of the skins overseas and wait a while before stealing more dalmatians, for the original plan was to start a dalmatian fur farm and that plan has to be put on hold for a bit.

Instead of training the pups, Pongo and Missis begin the desperate rescue that very night, spiriting all the pups away while Jasper and Saul are distracted with their favourite television show, a panel game similar to What’s My Line?  The Colonel uses the Midnight Barking (if the Twilight Barking is like the 6 o’clock news, the Midnight Barking is like the 11 o’clock news) to arrange an itinerary for Pongo and Missis to lead the pups back home to London and safety, but it’s going to take almost two weeks to get home that way.

After an encounter with evil, thieving gypsies, it’s realized that dalmatians are going to be very noticeable on the road to London.  This is where Pongo gets the idea to roll around in soot and disguise the pups, after seeing one of their own having already gotten into the soot.

Danger would be their constant companion on the way back to London.  No sooner had they figured out how to disguise themselves so that they would have no more run ins like with the gypsies, the dalmatians find Cruella gleefully watching a building burn down, as devils are wont to do.  They flee the scene as fast as they can, but soon Cruella’s back on the road and blaring her monstrous motor horn, frightening the fleeing dogs.

They manage to find a miracle, a van they can hide in and hitch a ride to London.  It’s Christmas Eve and the prospect of being home to enjoy the holiday with the Dearlys is comforting to Pongo.  Upon returning to London and exiting the van, the dogs pass by Cruella’s home and in a bit of revenge, they destroy all of Cruella’s extensive collection of furs, helped by an unexpected ally.  It turns out that Cruella’s cat, who had already tried running away at the start of the book, has already been exacting small vengeances for the deaths of her kittens and is more than willing to help get bigger revenge.  She’s lost 44 of them to date.  (That’s as many as 4.4 tens, and that’s terrible.)  The destruction of the furs is a much bigger vengeance and also serves to financially ruin the de Vils since most of the furs were for sale.

With that done, Pongo and Missis lead the pups home.  With Pongo, Missis, Perdita and 97 pups, the Dearlys find themselves with a hundred.  At the very end of the novel, the Dearlys buy Hell Hall (Cruella put it up for sale very cheaply, for she was likely desperate for money) and spruce it up into a respectable place to raise dalmatians.

At the very end, Perdita’s long lost mate finds her and becomes dalmatian number 101.  Meanwhile, a financially ruined Cruella is so apoplectic about the loss of her beloved furs that her black hair turns white and her white hair turns green, and she and her husband decide to go into the plastic raincoat business instead.

This is the story as Dodie Smith wrote it.  How did Disney choose to adapt it?

 

One Hundred and One Dalmatians (1961)

This was a surprisingly fast transition from book to animated movie, and the choice of adapting Dodie Smith’s instant classic came at a time when Disney himself was worried about the future of hand drawn animation.  Even back in the 1960s, he was seeing the writing on the wall.  It was getting to be an expensive business, and unless each movie was a complete and utter success, it didn’t seem like a great investment to take up to four years to make a film like they did with Sleeping Beauty and then watch it get wrecked at the box office.  The previous film, Lady and the Tramp, was a runaway success and so a bigger budget was afforded Sleeping Beauty to make it look even better, but it didn’t work out.

The rights to The Hundred and One Dalmatians had already been bought and some work already done on the film, so I guess they felt it would be a waste not to finish it, and it’s a good thing they did.  The movie performed very well, and to date has made the company a total of $303 million from its original run and several theatrical re-releases.

The movie version begins with Pongo living the bachelor life with Roger Radcliffe, an aspiring songwriter.  Pongo is bored out of his skull and worried about Roger’s love life, so he attempts to intervene.  Let me just say that I love the narration at the beginning, which is from the point of view of Pongo.  Anyway, Pongo spots a lovely dalmatian being walked by a lady who he judges to be potentially attractive to a human and eagerly convinces Roger to go along.  The movie devotes several minutes to Pongo’s quest for love, and it’s ultimately successful for both Pongo and Perdita as well as Roger and Anita.

The movie removes adult dalmatians Missis (Pongo’s literary mate) and Prince (Perdita’s literary mate), renames the Dearlys and combines the two Nannies into one.  Cruella lives up to her book version and is somehow even worse, showing little respect for anything or anyone except her beloved furs.

In the movie, rather than Little Cadpig being stillborn and revived by Roger, this role is given to Lucky.  Meanwhile, Cruella makes an offer for the puppies but is turned down, so of course she arranges their theft.

What’s very interesting is that in the novel, the Dearlys don’t have television but Roger and Anita do, with the dalmatian family quickly falling in love with the various programs, especially one starring a heroic dog named Thunder.  Lucky also seems to be the most fascinated by television, like Cadpig is in the novel.

There’s an intimate coziness to this early portion of the film, but eventually the great dog robbery happens.  Horace and Jasper Baddun steal the puppies while posing as members of the electric company, but when the news hits the papers, the two begin to get cold feet from the whole business.  Cruella phones Anita posing as a concerned friend and manages to gaslight her into believing in the devil woman’s innocence.

Pongo sends word via the Twilight Bark and the network of dogs relay the message all over London and into the countryside.  Thanks to a male Tibbs observing the puppies being held in Hell Hall and reporting back, news of their missing sons and daughters return to Pongo and Perdita.  Just like in the book, the majority of the puppies were bought and paid for, but this time there are 99 of them in all, 84 of them legitimately acquired, the extra two puppies compensating for the reduction in adults.

Pongo and Perdita immediately rush off to rescue the puppies and the journey is unfortunately very unpleasant, but soon they arrive in Suffolk, and just in time, because Cruella has demanded the death of the pups.  Tibbs attempts to help the pups escape Hell Hall ahead of the adult dogs’ arrival while Horace and Jasper are distracted with their favourite television show, and the pair are such low quality criminals that it’s relatively easy for the pups to evade them.

Pongo and Perdita confront Jasper and Horace and manage to defeat them with their pups barking their support, but the villains don’t stay down and they’re defeated again in an encounter with the horse from the nearby farm.

The dogs begin for home and the trip is even worse for them, Lucky most of all, being the runt of Pongo and Perdita’s litter.  “I’m tired.  And I’m hungry.  And my tail’s froze.  And my nose is froze.  And my ears are froze.  And my toes are froze,” says a very obviously suffering Lucky, shivering from the cold.  The pups are struggling against a blizzard and it’s likely some of them would’ve died if not for a collie who finds them and offers them shelter on a farm.  The farm’s cows offer their milk to the hungry pups, and all hundred and one gratefully sleep the night away.

Cruella manages to find their trail and tracks them to Dinsford, where a ride home has been arranged for them in a van, but Cruella and the Badduns stand in their way.  Lucky and Patch roughhouse in the chimney and this gives Pongo the idea to roll in the soot in order to sneak past the villains and into the van.  Two separate moments from the novel are combined into one, with the added peril of having Cruella lurking about and it’s a remarkably tense scene, especially when the van is about to leave and some of the puppies start to lose their soot.  The jig is up and Cruella gives chase, very nearly running the van off the road several times, but her imbecilic henchmen end up accidentally colliding with her car and leaving all three of them defeated in a snowbank.

With the defeat of Cruella, the entire lot of dalmatians make it home to Roger and Anita.  His song “Cruella de Vil” became such a big hit that apparently he’s rolling in cash, which is good because with a hundred and one dogs to feed, his weekly grocery budget will likely skyrocket.  At the end, he starts composing another song, and with this scene, it’s suggested that the family’s going to be okay.  They’re going to buy up some land in the countryside and start a dalmatian plantation, and the spontaneous rhyme makes it sound like he’s going to compose his next big hit.

It’s interesting that the Disney of the 1960s cut the gypsy scene out in favour of expanding other scenes.  Yep, the Walt Disney Company had a chance to be racist during a time period where no one judged them for it and they actually chose not to.  This is a company that named a crow Jim, had a pair of slant-eyed Siamese cats sing in broken English, had another oriental-designed cat play “Chopsticks” on a piano while using chopsticks, and who composed a song called “What Makes The Red Man Red?”

Dodie Smith herself approved of the changes Disney made to her story and felt her novel had been improved.  It’s certainly a tighter narrative in places, with scenes combined for efficient story telling, other scenes extended to promote a cozy feeling of home, and an increase in stakes near the end so that Cruella directly threatens the puppies rather than being something to avoid, like if you were to play an action RPG instead of a stealth game.  Her cat and husband are no longer part of the story, left out in order to tighten the narrative further, and this leads to an… interesting sequel, but we’ll get to that.

Disney gets a lot of grief lately regarding their sudden insistence on making live action versions of all of their greatest animated films, but back in the 1990s, they made a live action version of this film and met with some mild success.

 

101 Dalmatians (1996)

Whereas the original animated version ran for an hour and twenty minutes, the live action movie adds almost a half an hour to the plot.  The live action film stars Glenn Close as Cruella de Vil and she delivers pretty much the definitive live action version of the character.  Honestly, I don’t know how the new Cruella film is going to stand up to Glenn Close’s version.

Anyone who has seen the 2019 version of The Lion King and saw just how much padding the mouse scene at the very beginning received won’t be surprised to know that the very start of 101 Dalmatians adds in an entire morning routine that was not in the original.  It comes complete with a computer that writes “HELLO PONGO” on the monitor, showing that this version takes place at about roughly the same year as its release.  A rare white tigress has been slaughtered for its fur despite supposedly being safe in the London Zoo, suggesting that someone’s been poaching fur.

In this film, Roger is an independent video game designer with the last name Dearly and his latest game is about a dalmatian attempting to defeat an evil dogcatcher.  His game is rejected and he’s really feeling the financial pinch.

Anita is a fashion designer working for the House of DeVil, headed by Cruella.  She’s obsessed with stripes until she sees a photo of Perdita and becomes suddenly obsessed with spots, desiring not just the aesthetic but the fur as well.

It’s very much a modern take for the story, since I guess writing hit songs is not as lucrative as it was in the early 1960s unless you’re Max Martin and make it in the industry through sheer volume.  Seriously, not long after this film was released, the teen pop genre became huge and a lot of the songs from the era were written by him.  They were shallow fluff with dumb lyrics but everyone ate it up for a few years.

Meanwhile, Roger’s original job in the novel was in finance, working with the government to balance the books every time the government screwed up (why they didn’t just appoint him minister of finance, I’ll never know), but perhaps finance ministers being good at their jobs is also something that’s hard to believe nowadays.  Well, unless you were living in Canada in 1996, when Paul Martin was our minister of finance.  He balanced our country’s budget and although he would later prove to be a poor Prime Minister, he was probably the best minister of finance we’ve had in a long while.

I find it interesting that, when this movie was released, two separate people named Martin each worked a job that a previous incarnation of Roger had and were quite successful at it.

By now, viewers will likely have figured out another major difference between the two films.  Although the original animated film told the story from the point of view of the dogs, this film’s focus is more on the humans of the story.  This means that the dogs don’t talk, unfortunately, so if you’re a fan of the dogs from the original, you’ll have to be happy with body language.

With all of the additions to the film, the introduction between Roger and Anita takes twice as long to get to, but no scene drags for too long.  It really does feel like John Hughes is still at the peak of his career here, which is certainly a miracle because the very next year would see both Flubber and Home Alone 3 come out, two of the worst movies of his career and 200 minutes that I’ll never have back.

In the live action movie, it turns out that both Anita and Perdita are pregnant at the same time.  Cruella stops by and finds out about the puppies, of course.  And let me say, Cruella is even more monstrous in the live action film than in the book.  The skin from the tigress is delivered to Cruella in a previous scene, and she is particularly judgemental against Roger’s profession.  Let’s see, someone who absolutely despises video games and has beautiful tigers killed?  She could not be any more my enemy than she is in the live action version unless she were to also declare her distaste for mathematics.

Just like in the book and animated film, one of Pongo’s fifteen puppies is stillborn, but Roger manages to rub life back into it.  The live action film calls the runt of the litter Lucky, just like the animated one.  Neither the animated film nor the live action one acknowledges how difficult it would be for one mother dog to feed fifteen puppies.

And just like the animated film, Jasper and Horace show up to steal the puppies.  This is where the film gets a little tricky, for it depends on the viewer’s knowledge of the animated movie.  We know that Pongo and Perdita run off to search for their pups, but this is the only version which doesn’t allow them any dialogue to communicate this to the audience.

This is also the only version where the entire group of puppies being held by Cruella de Vil are stolen.  Maybe the fashion industry isn’t as lucrative as it used to be either, or else she could’ve afforded to buy all 99 of them?  Her taxidermist has also kept careful records of who the pups were stolen from and how many, for some reason.

This movie’s version of the Twilight Barking is started when Pongo barks on the roof of his home and soon all of London is barking.  The news eventually makes it to a farm in the countryside where all the animals – including some woodland creatures – are seen gathering.  Perhaps Cruella is such a threat to the animal kingdom that its best and brightest have all gathered to defeat her, including some squirrels and raccoons from the nearby woods.  You’d think they’d be safe from Cruella, but I guess no animal is too small to be skinned alive for her vanity?

Word of their pups gets back to Pongo and Perdita the next morning and off they run to follow the network of dogs as they race to their pups rescue, but the narrative shifts to focus on Horace and Jasper being treated by the animal kingdom as this film’s Wet Bandits.  Lucky the pup isn’t the film’s only Kevin.  The rest of the animal kingdom lay traps for Jasper and Horace to do damage to themselves, and even Cruella falls victim.  Hugh Laurie begins to look more and more like Daniel Stern as the film progresses, especially when he gets electrocuted.  John Hughes literally stole from himself when writing the second half of the film.

The film rescues the puppies ahead of Pongo and Perdita’s arrival, and Roger and Anita are also surprisingly on the ball, helping to aid in the seizure of Cruella’s ill gotten tiger pelt.  Not only that, but the film doesn’t focus too much on the pups’ journey home.  Also, despite the records the taxidermist kept, the police had no way of figuring out which pup belonged to whom, so the Dearlys agree to take in all 101 of the dalmatians.  Somehow.  Despite that Anita was fired by an upset Cruella earlier in the film and Roger has yet to find any success in the game industry, they still take in a hundred and one dalmatians without a plan for how to afford to take care of them.

But all is not lost, for Roger does finally manage to sell his dalmatian video game to… I guess a development studio?  Anyway, he adds Cruella as the final boss and it turns out that’s exactly what the game needs.  I guess in the mid 1990s, being a video game designer is roughly as lucrative as being a songwriter in the early 1960s.

If I have to describe the live action film in one sentence, I think I’d end up using the film as its own definition.  It’s definitely what happens when John Hughes re-writes a classic Disney film and sees the Baddun brothers as the next Wet Bandits.

It’s amazing how similar the basic plot is between the three versions, and yet the execution is so different.  Bill Peet, the writer of the animated version of the story, valued a tight narrative and only expanded scenes that he deemed were completely necessary, eliminating extra characters and scenes he didn’t need as well as combining others until he had an efficient script that didn’t dawdle in its pacing.  John Hughes opted instead to expand the film and turn it into more of a caper, with the bad guys enduring pratfalls and punishment, turning them from credible threats into buffoons as soon as the puppy murder was expected to begin.  Even Cruella was made much less threatening and found herself easily defeated.  Like the animated version, it also didn’t dawdle in its pacing, but there was definitely a lot more there, a lot… extra.  There was even a fourth villain, one which was surprisingly easy to dispatch despite being the most menacing of the bunch.

So with the three versions of the original story being so similar and yet somewhat different, how do the sequels fare?

 

102 Dalmatians (2000)

I imagine there are some who think that turning Cruella into an eccentric fashion mogul in the first of the two live action films dramatically missed the point of her character potentially being a literal devil.  It’s even there in her name.  In the book, this is achieved by giving her a callous disregard for life, as well as odd quirks like eating food that tastes excessively of pepper and enjoying excessive warmth and fire.  In the animated version, it’s played up at the end when she’s driving like a maniac right at the truck containing the puppies and I can’t help but think of the Headless Horseman throwing his pumpkin head when I see Cruella’s desperate chase result in her car becoming gradually more and more destroyed, her hair flowing wildly behind her and a cruel, angry look on her face.  Both she and her car basically become a devil as she chases the dalmatians.

You don’t really get that sort of feel from the live action film.  John Hughes perhaps did his job a little too well and reinvented her into one of his usual sorts of villains, the type that end up receiving more punishment than they give out.  You see it in Home Alone when the Wet Bandits are trying to burgle Kevin’s home.  You see it in Dennis the Menace when Switchblade Sam kidnaps Dennis and the kid is not only oblivious to what’s going on, he also manages to subdue the criminal without even trying to.  In 101 Dalmatians (1996), Cruella and her henchmen are defeated by the very animal kingdom she tried to dominate and perhaps this is poetic justice for her, but it also downplays her more demonic attributes.

Granted, in the book, she and her husband were trying to make a living by selling their furs, but it’s not really brought up and it doesn’t seem all that important until the very, very end.  So it feels incongruous that she’s prominently in the fashion business in the live action movie.

Of course Disney wanted to make a sequel to the live action film, since the first was successful enough.  I think they’ve always understood that Cruella makes for a larger than life villain, especially when portrayed by the right actress.

It’s too bad that Cruella’s the only carry over from the first film, the entire rest of the cast is new.  Well, I think her valet also returns from the first film, and there’s one other character, but I’ll get to him in a moment.

102 Dalmatians opens with Cruella de Vil cured of her desire to kill and skin puppies and she’s granted parole, but is warned that if she violates said parole, she’ll lose the rest of her fortune.  Upon returning home, she is aghast when she’s confronted with her collection of furs.  So afraid she is of returning to her old ways, she locks away her entire collection, along with the sketch Anita drew that had originally started her obsession with dalmatian fur and brought about her downfall.

Meanwhile, the Second Chance Dog Shelter has been foreclosed on after experiencing financial troubles, but Cruella arrives to buy the shelter in an attempt to clean up her image.  Very few people are willing to buy her story even though she’s sincere, but she makes quite an effort of it.

Chloe, Cruella’s probation officer, is convinced she’s up to her old tricks, because of what Cruella once tried to do to her dog Dipstick.  In the years since, Dipstick has found a mate of his own and sired a trio of pups (so much more manageable than fifteen), and it’s because of Dipstick that Chloe is suspicious.  Cruella’s over the top pro-puppy stance does nothing to allay her fears.

Which is a shame, since Cruella is no longer a villain at this point in the film.  I can say this with certainty because she was cured by an experimental series of therapies from a doctor named Pavlov.  It turns out that a loud bell, because of course it’s a bell when someone named Pavlov is involved, like that of Big Ben can reverse his therapy completely.  This is bad news for Cruella, who finds herself in London when Big Ben rings… but what I don’t get is, Big Ben is a constant presence in London and chimes every quarter hour, so how could Cruella not have heard the bell at all before this point in the film?

Big Ben causes Cruella to turn back into her old self and she realizes that she has some unfinished business from the first film: a dalmatian coat.  However, instead of going after adult dogs, she specifically wants puppies for some reason, 102 of them in total, and would prefer to steal them all.  She knows if she’s caught stealing puppies, the rest of her fortune will be seized and go to dog shelters, so she sets up the owner of the Second Chance Dog Shelter to take the fall for the theft of a bunch of puppies.

Its owner, Kevin, has become romantically interested in Chloe, but the revelation that he might be behind a string of puppy thefts drives a wedge between them, and to comfort her, Cruella invites Chloe over for dinner.  (I hope no pepper is involved.)  But this is a distraction in order to steal Dipstick’s pups, and Chloe realizes she was right about Cruella all along.  Kevin and Chloe make things right with each other and somehow figure out Cruella is going to France with the puppies and will be on board the Orient Express.

If you want to enjoy this film, you really need to suspend a lot of disbelief.

A major thread throughout the movie has been Oddball, one of Dipstick’s puppies who was born without spots.  Cruella does not know Oddball is a spotless puppy until seeing her for the first time after arranging her theft.  This makes her still one dalmatian short of her goal of a hundred and two, since she doesn’t want spotless puppies.  With the help of a parrot who thinks he’s a dog, Oddball attempts to rescue the dalmatian puppies.  Also on the case are a reunited Kevin and Chloe, as well as Kevin’s dogs, and with everyone working together, the puppies all escape into a nearby bakery where Cruella is sent through the machinery and ends up in the furnace, baked into a monstrous cake.

As a result of her crimes, her money is seized and given to the Second Chance Dog Shelter.  Also, at the very end of the film, Oddball begins to show her spots, much to Chloe’s delight.

One of the things I noticed about 101 Dalmatians (1996) is that it downplayed the dogs in the story, but here the dogs are much more prominent.  Oddball is given much of the spotlight as she temporarily defeats the man sent to kidnap her and her littermates before he succeeds in getting them, she gets herself on board the Orient Express with help from the parrot who thinks he’s a dog, she helps the puppies escape afterwards and she even faces off against Cruella and defeats her.

Whereas the first live action film overemphasizes Cruella as fashion mogul, the sequel delivers a more traditional Cruella experience and believe it or not, is a satisfying film.  Either that, or the sheer garbage I’ve been exposing myself to in recent weeks has made me more generous to 102 Dalmatians.

 

101 Dalmatians II: Patch’s London Adventure (2003)

At the height of Disney’s obsession with sequels to their animated films came this continuation.  Produced by the same studio that made sequels to The Lion King, The Little Mermaid, Atlantis, Pocahontas and Aladdin, it was pretty clear that the quality of their output varied widely.  It really seemed like they were asked to make sequels without being given the time to actually develop any good ideas, and the movies that stuck their landing were nothing short of miracles.

Patch’s London Adventure begins with Pongo narrating, as he did in the first movie.  Somehow the Dalmatian Plantation can all fit into the same London home Roger and Anita had from the first film, but not for long since they’re moving into their new, much bigger home.  Amid the chaos of all the puppies, Patch is feeling lost and somehow alone in a sea of spots.  He desperately wants to be one of a kind, so it’s no wonder he’s the one who likes the Thunderbolt Adventure Hour the most, especially his idol and the star of the show, Thunderbolt.

Before heading to bed, Patch hears about a contest being held by Kanine Krunchies on the set of Thunderbolt’s latest adventure, “Thunderbolt vs. the Hound of the Baskervilles” and naturally wants to go meet his hero.  Up until now, the movie is doing fine.  You don’t really need more than offering Patch a chance to be one of a kind and to learn a few things along the way.

However, the movie brings back Cruella, still driving her wrecked car as it disintegrates around her, no longer allowed to own furs thanks to the terms of her probation.  She’s at the lowest point of her life until she walks past an art gallery and notices a framed picture of a single black dot.  She meets the artist, a painter named Lars, and the two fall in love.  This can only end badly.

Patch’s melancholy at being “one of a hundred and one” is very relatable.  He is feeling sad at how easily he blends in to the others and ventures off to sleep in an empty dog food bag since he’s having trouble sleeping with the rest of the puppies… and gets left behind accidentally when Pongo counts all the other pups and due to difficulties with the counting, thinks that they’re all there.  If 101 Dalmatians (1996) steals from the second half of Home Alone, the rest of it shows up here.

Patch decides if his family doesn’t miss him, he won’t miss the family and he hitches a ride on a Kanine Krunchies truck in order to go meet Thunderbolt.  But you shouldn’t meet your heroes because it turns out Thunderbolt is pretty full of himself and even makes fun of Patch’s squeaky bark.

It also turns out the contest is being held in order to find a replacement for Thunderbolt and he gets the idea to go and become a hero in real life so that he can remain on his show.

Nothing is working out for anyone.  Despite befriending Patch due to his extensive knowledge of the show and having him along to help, Thunderbolt’s clumsy and naive attempts to play hero are making things worse for those he tries to help.  Meanwhile, Lars can’t seem to paint anything that’ll satisfy Cruella, so she decides to defy the restraining order Roger and Anita filed against her in order to try to get the puppies again.  Patch’s picture in the paper alongside Thunderbolt at the contest bring the two plot threads together and Cruella decides to pay a visit to the farm she sees written on Patch’s collar.

Cruella doesn’t need to be a villain in this movie, because Thunderbolt’s sidekick Lightning lied to him about the nature of the contest.  Thunderbolt isn’t being replaced, he just thinks he is, and as he runs off to play real life hero, Lightning manages to get the show runners to elevate him to the starring role, and thus we see who the actual villain of the movie should have been.

With help from Cruella’s henchmen Jasper and Horace, the pups are stolen for a second time.  She wants the puppies to be killed and incorporated into art, but when Lars refuses, she decides to return to her original mission of having a dalmatian coat.

With help from the Twilight Bark, word from the pups reaches Patch and he asks for help from Thunderbolt, but after a day of failed heroics, he’s about to confess to Patch that he’s just an actor, but Patch manages to convince him to come to the rescue.  However, thanks to a bit of sabotage from Lightning, both Thunderbolt and Patch are captured and this is where the truth comes out.  Poor Patch is disillusioned by his hero and all seems lost, until he remembers episode 18, opens all the cages and leads his family out.  This leads to another madcap chase, this time on the streets of London with a Kanine Krunchies truck and a double-decker bus, but Cruella is defeated thanks to Patch’s knowledge of his favourite show, as well as the sudden arrival of Thunderbolt, who has regained his confidence.

And what of Lightning and his villainous ways?  He gets defeated as collateral damage during the defeat of Cruella, that’s how little the film cares about him.

I feel like the movie could’ve been done without incorporating Cruella into the plot.  There doesn’t need to be another plot to steal 99 puppies, it just shows how lazy the writers are that they can’t think of anything else for a film about that many dalmatians.  Both the live action and animated sequels have Cruella steal a bunch of puppies again in order to make a fur coat, literally the same plot as before.  As a result, the quality of the plot is rather low, in my opinion.

The quality of songs in Patch’s London Adventure are also much lower than in the original film, but fortunately it doesn’t go overboard with them.  The writers realized that the original wasn’t a Broadway musical, so the sequel doesn’t have to be either.

Ultimately, this movie and the live action sequel both demonstrate what happens when an over the top villain like Cruella becomes popular.  But since the live action version has a sequel and the animated version has a sequel… does the book have a sequel?

 

The Starlight Barking (1967)

Yes, it does.  Written by Dodie Smith and published six years after the debut of the animated adaptation, The Starlight Barking follows directly from her first book.  Despite approving of the changes made to her original story in order to bring it to the big screen, she opts to remain firmly within her own version of the setting when writing this book.  Thus, all of the characters that do not appear in the film versions are back, including Missis and Cadpig, two dogs that are incredibly important to the plot of the book.

It all begins one summer day at Hell Hall.  The Dearlys have moved the whole kit and kaboodle there, dalmatians and all, sometime between the first and second books.  Pongo wakes up several hours later than he usually does and notices everyone else is still sleeping peacefully.  Missis soon awakens, but they’re unable to wake the Dearlys, nor do the white Persian cats awaken when Pongo accidentally kicks their basket.  One of the cats was formerly Cruella’s cat and the other was adopted in between the first book and the second, but now both cats are sleeping peacefully and cannot be awakened.

Pongo and Missis venture out to investigate and find that all doors and gates seem to open and close for the dogs as if they’re automatic doors.  Keep in mind, this takes place over half a century ago, automatic doors that sense when someone’s approaching was still mainly within the realm of science fiction back then, although automatic doors were beginning to appear on the market at roughly the same time that Disney’s animated adaptation of the first novel was released.

Upon arriving at the farm next door to talk with the sheepdog from the first book, Pongo finds out that only the sheepdog has woken up.  Every other animal on the farm are sleeping an uninterruptible sleep, including Pussy Willow the cat.  The sheepdog is particularly upset that even she’s affected by whatever has been happening.  All the while, none of the dogs have noticed that they’re hungry.  Somehow, none of their physical needs are needing to be met.

Suddenly, Pongo hears the voice of Cadpig.  In the time between the first book and the second, Cadpig had become quite taken by the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom after constantly watching him on television and she managed to get herself adopted by him.  As far as everyone knows, she’s residing at 10 Downing Street, yet Pongo can hear her voice as if she’s right there with him.  She doesn’t know how to explain it yet, but she’s discovered that dogs have become telepathic and as a result, are capable of communicating over great distances.  She’s also discovered other new powers, including an ability to float above the ground and zoom about as if on a hoverboard.

As the canine representative of 10 Downing Street, Cadpig knows this means she’s going to have to take charge and she asks for her father and mother to come to London and help her, and the pair bring a small army of dogs with them.  They needn’t have bothered, since many more dogs have already been making their way to London from all over the United Kingdom in what will eventually come to be known as the Great Swoosh.

Upon arriving in London, it’s demonstrated that various machinery and infrastructure can now be operated by canine thought, like traffic lights and elevators.  This helps the dogs get around, for otherwise they wouldn’t be able to operate doors or move up and down inside buildings.

The dogs investigate Cruella de Vil, for she’d returned to London to sell “KLOES THAT KLANK.”  Then again, she also spells her own name wrong so it’s not surprising she can’t communicate the clothing she sells very well.  This version of Cruella gave up on furs entirely after her entire collection were destroyed and at first she started by selling plastic raincoats but apparently she’s graduated to metal clothing.  Not suits of armour, just plain regular clothing that happens to be made of metals like tin.  Cruella and her husband are both sound asleep, although unlike most humans and animals they’ve seen thus far, Cruella doesn’t seem to be enjoying her dreams.

With no other leads to follow, Pongo happens to turn on a television and a bright star appears on the screen and starts to communicate with the gathered dogs.  Cadpig is to send word all throughout the United Kingdom that all dogs are to be gathered in specific places by midnight, upon which something frightening is going to happen, according to the voice.

By this point, a few of the dogs’ allies from the first book are awake too, given that they were made honorary dogs between books.  These allies are the white Persian who used to belong to Cruella, the cat known as Pussy Willow, and a human who can speak dog and who offered aid to the dalmatians in the first book.  The gathered dogs and their allies try to figure out the nature of this being, but a vague-sounding threat from the voice stops them in their tracks and they feel they have no choice but to follow its instructions.

Midnight arrives, and the voice causes all sources of light to go out before suddenly appearing brilliantly before the dogs.  He’s a being known as Sirius, Lord of the Dog Star, and he’s come with an offer for all dogs in the world.  He’s willing to take all of them back with him to live at the Dog Star, for he’s worried that humans are going to destroy the world the next time they wage war and that most of the dogs will die.  Sirius fears that the ones who cling to life after the war will end up in a fight for survival with other dogs, finding it necessary to kill and eat each other.

But many dogs are worried about their humans and love them too much to agree to Sirius’s offer.  After discussing it among themselves, the dogs come to their decision, and it’s unanimous around the world: dogs are too loving and loyal to their humans to choose to abandon them in order to save themselves.  Sirius is a little sad, but respects the decision and allows the dogs enough time to swoosh back to their homes before the gifts he’s given to them will fade and they’ll return to being ordinary dogs.

The more serious, political topics covered in The Starlight Barking make me realize that the first book had something to say as well, and it presented its thesis in kind of an audacious manner.  The Hundred and One Dalmatians tried to convince its readers that killing animals for their fur is wrong by making dalmatians the next target of a greedy, fur-obsessed lady who was deliberately characterized as a devil woman.  Its sequel tackles war and politics:

Other Cabinet Ministers were presented, also some dogs who lived with members of the Opposition.  “That’s the party that didn’t win the last Election,” Cadpig explained to her mother.  “But of course we’re all on the same side now.”
“Everyone should be on the same side always,” said Missis.  “Think how much time it would save.”

The book still handles it in a whimsical manner, featuring dogs flying around and commanding doors to open or lights to turn on.  The charm of the first book is back, since Pongo and the rest of the dogs all think of their humans as their pets, even if Sirius tries to destroy that innocence by cluing them into the true nature of the world, the way dogs are treated by their humans, and the fact that the humans are the owners, not the other way around.

But even though Sirius is powerful and has unkind things to say about humans, he cannot sway the dogs to his side and in the end, he is gracious enough to respect the decision of his beloved canines and instead will content himself with watching from a distance like he had been for thousands of years already.

So there you have it, these are the three different sequels to each of the three versions of The Hundred and One Dalmatians.  The prequel film Cruella is currently scheduled to be released May 28 in theatres and with Premier Access on Disney+.