Too many fans seem to be blown away

if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

Close shines in drama with strong language, adult themes.

Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

not a revelation. but nice, amusing, childish, using old stereotypes and great actors. a film who reminds the original animation and who remains, after the joy of scenes, a little source of disappointment. because it is 101 Dalmatians and the expectations are high. the great skills of animals, the story who seems be a sketch, the stereotypes who transforms few scenes in reflections for Home alone, the romanticism who is, in few situations, fake, the puppies in not real credible situations does the film not the best choice for the seekers of the original flavor. but it is the film of Glenn Close and, yes, she is Cruella De Vil. short - a nice film. nothing more. but it seems be enough.

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??

This is the live-action version of 101 Dalmations, a story where Fashion designer Anita (Joley Richardson) and computer-game writer Roger (Jeff Daniels) meet and got married along with their dalmatians, Perdita and Pongo. The dogs' puppies are later kidnapped by Anita's boss Cruella De Vil (Glenn Close), who is plotting to use their fur for a coat. As a result, Pongo and Perdita set out on a mission to find and rescue all their ninety-nine children from Cruella and her cohorts, Jasper (Hugh Laurie) and Horace (Mark Williams).Jeff Daniels and Joely Richardson did an OK job in their acting and the execution and effects of the dogs were nicely done. However, the plot and story were filmed in the way that the animals were portrayed as "so cute that they're annoying." They're just a bunch of animals running around on the set and serving really no purpose or development in the movie, as opposed to the original animated version, where many of the dogs were given his/her own unique personality and charm. As a result, I ended up rooting for the villain. Glenn Close did an amazing job playing Cruella DeVil - crafty, sly and hilariously captivating. She basically stole the stage for me and it is rare that I would be rooting for a villain in a movie, which tells you how corny or annoying the heroes (animals) in this movie were.Overall, it's probably a good one for the little kids, but adults would probably prefer the animated one over this one.Grade C-

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!