Monday, December 2, 1996
"101 Dalmatians"
Directed by Stephen Herek
Starring Glenn Close
and Jeff Daniels
Disney’s modern pinnacle of animated success, "The Lion King,"
worked a magic with kids that was uncanny but indisputable. You
could carp all you wanted about the weak ending and hokey
soundtrack, but it all worked wonders for the target audience. Kids
couldn’t get enough. Yet, in the midst of its biggest hit, the
monolith that is Disney planted some seeds of failure.
These seeds have been growing slowly for a while now, at about
the same rate that their animated product is declining on critical
and commercial standards. With "101 Dalmatians," a live-action
adaptation of a cartoon, the problems catch up with them in a big
way.
Low on passion and excitement, this Thanksgiving offering should
be titled "107 Supporting Characters." It shouldn’t surprise
anyone; Disney’s been headed down this path for a while. Try and
remember anything Simba said or did in "The Lion King." Okay, now
how about the warthog thing? Disney animated flicks have always
been rich in supporting characters, but their void at lead is
becoming mammoth. And if you can even identify true leads in "101
Dalmatians," you’re reaching to protect your unconditional love for
all things Disney.
Things start out OK. Writer/producer John Hughes (yes, once the
best thing about the 1980s, now a sad relic unwilling to take
chances) does a decent job updating the tale to modern-day London,
where Anita (Joely Richardson) works at Cruella De Vil’s (Glenn
Close) fashion agency, and Roger (Jeff Daniels) struggles to design
video games. Both have loving dalmatians (Perdy and Pongo,
respectively) who meet in the park and start an elaborate bike
chase that passes for momentum in the early going. The shortest
courtship in the world ends and everyone gets pregnant.
Enter Cruella, feeling scorned and deliciously evil. In one of
the more enjoyable moments of the film, she declares her intention
to wait for the puppies in no uncertain terms. It’s the one time in
the film where Close unleashes her talent on the role. Her
participation is, granted, inspired casting, but it feels like
slumming when the film turns into an uninspired series of plunges
into mud.
That’s where the film is determined to end up. But we’ve still
got about a hour to pass getting there. So after 15 puppies pop
out, Cruella sends her henchmen (Hugh Laurie and Mark Williams) to
ferret them away, and then the entire animal kingdom helps to find,
free and protect the dogs. Kids start yawning, the story starts
meandering, and everyone who participated in the first half of the
film (Daniels, Richardson, Pongo, etc.) gets forgotten about.
Ultimately, the worst of the poor choices Hughes and friends
made while adapting this tale was shutting the dogs up. You can’t
have 101 characters running around without any expressions,
personalities or articulation. It’s an inauspicious state for one
of the charter members of the Disney canon, but hopefully it will
show the creative team where they got so off the track. Disney’s
summer animated opuses and live-action adaptations are still going
to be events, so it behooves everyone for them to be of higher
quality than this waste of time and dogs.
Grade: C-
By Michael Horowitz
"Sling Blade"
Directed by Billy Bob Thornton
Starring Billy Bob Thornton
and Dwight Yoakam
If you are looking for a feel-good movie, look elsewhere. "Sling
Blade" is a darkly moralistic tale of a mentally handicapped man,
Karl, who was institutionalized for killing his mother and her
sleazy boyfriend when he was 12. The movie begins 20 years later,
with his unwilling release from the institution.
It may sound promising by way of a unique premise, but the movie
has several shortcomings and plot inconsistencies to keep it
disappointing. At first it seems to paint Karl as a dangerous
psychopath, but quickly ditches this idea. Karl’s mental capacity
also changes throughout; one minute he has trouble ordering from a
fast food stand, and the next minute he is spouting deep
psychological insights.
Billy Bob Thornton, as Karl, turns in a solid performance, but
it cannot overcome flaws in the story like the weakly written,
one-dimensional characters. Karl’s nice friend, Linda, kindly takes
him into her home. This seems like a wonderful arrangement until
the appearance of Doyle (Dwight Yoakam), Linda’s bad boyfriend.
Doyle is more of a caricature than a character. He gets drunk,
yells and gives people mean sneers, but not much else. There are
promising moments when Doyle seems to show a side other than the
one-dimensional monster, but these moments seem to slip away the
second they arrive.
John Ritter, of "Three’s Company" fame, is cast as Vaughn, a gay
man trying to live quietly in this small Bible Belt community. His
character is little more than a tired stereotype of the passive and
quirky gay guy who is constantly picked on. The audience is
supposed to associate Vaughn with Karl because they are both
misunderstood outcasts, but the comparison is awkward and
forced.
The movie is admirable for bringing up some interesting moral
questions. And the direction is solid, with intriguingly long
camera shots and powerful close-ups that work effectively to create
an intensity the script could not accomplish alone. But overall the
movie feels contrived to elicit certain emotions from the audience,
and the weak characters lack the power to draw the audience in
effectively.
Grade: B-
By Ricky Herzog