101 Dalmatians (1961) Still a Great Watch

101 Dalmatians (1961) Disney

Last night I did not have a lot of time and decided to watch something that would allow me save some time. Now I know it may be silly to watch a movie like this when you are a male in your mid-twenties, but I happen to love the old Disney movies I grew up watching. There is something about the older ones that makes them unique. They are from another time and are told as stories of old. They don’t intend to make political references or even social inquiries. They just tell thoughtful stories and demonstrate real feelings. Although I don’t mind the way stories are told today, there is always a feeling of nostalgia for the way stories used to be told.

Robin Hood has been my favorite Disney movies since I was a boy and is probably the best version of the Robin Hood story to date. I didn’t mind the Ridley Scott version, but that is not important.

The 101 Dalmatians story actually happens to be one of the only Disney tales that sticks to the actual story version of the book. It is the tale of Pongo and Perdida and their human pets which are named Roger and Anita. They have puppies which are stolen from them by an evil woman named Cruella de Vil who wants to make fur coats out of them. Pongo and Perdida eventually save their 15 puppies and the other 84 as well. This heartwarming film is fun to watch and won’t waste your time. It is good for viewers of all ages.

(As a side note) Cruella de Vil is supposed to translate to “Cruel Woman Devil” and I say woman devil because the ‘a’ at the end of her name denotes that it is a female in Latin based languages. What’s great about her name is that it was obviously used to be deliberately evil as a joke. The sad part is that many movies of our time fail to name the villains of the stories properly. For instance, in the Star Wars series the names of the villains are supposed to make them inherently evil, but they do not disguise them well and they are not joking. One name I hate from the Star Wars series is General Grievous. It is literally the word used for pain and suffering except they didn’t mask it cleverly. It just comes off as being stupid because there was no thought put into it. The same goes for Darth Sidious. His name is just half of the word insidious which means slow harmful effects which is obviously the basis of the character. Cruella de Vil acutally has a name that makes sense in real life because it could be construed as Cruella De Ville which properly states that her family name comes from “the village” and has actual roots in a Latin base.

Sorry for ranting about that, but someone needed to say it.

There are some differences from the book to the movies that I thought I should note such as:

For one, the name of “Perdida” (which means lost is Spanish) is actually referring to another female Dalmatian in the book who is found abandoned in the snow by Mrs. Dearly (Annita).

Mr. Dearly in the book also happens to be an accountant (not a songwriter like in the movie) and lives off of a lifelong tax exemption from the government because he apparently is one of the greatest financial minds in the whole of England. He later purchases the property of Hell Hall from Cruella de Vil when she sells it after the puppy kidnapping goes south.

The car that Cruella drives actually does not exist at the time, but it is basically the same car developed in the seventies and known as the Panther DeVille. The odd part of the car was that it was made in the seventies, but it was made to look like a car from the twenties or thirties.