Word: dalmatian
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Amid the traditional media babble of the holiday season's opening days, dog fanciers with a lifetime devotion to the Dalmatian are lining up to tell us just what a destructive, genetically flawed, virtually unmanageable...
Apparently, bad-mouthing the breed is considered the only way to blunt a Disney-fueled demand that could cause thousands of ill-conceived Dalmatians to be dumped on the market by puppy mills and thousands more dumped in the street by bored children who didn't really bank on that cuddly little puppy's growing up. Given the disaster-movie tone of the reports, it wouldn't surprise me to see citizens running in panic from their homes, shouting, "Help! Help! Dalmatian meltdown...
...people who have the credentials to insult the Dalmatian for its own good are, of course, the very breeders who have spent their lives presenting it as the noblest of canines. It's as if the teenagers who have been standing in a two-mile ticket line for a Foo Fighters concert started buttonholing passing reporters to warn that grunge can lead to poor study habits and might even be a bridge addiction to the music of Lawrence Welk. In a typical radio interview I heard, one authority was going on about how demanding Dalmatians are, and how much hair...
...suppose it's possible that Disney and the Dalmatian industry are cooperating in a piggyback promotion scheme designed to have both of their products discussed incessantly. Still, it is a little odd that people being interviewed with beautiful Dalmatians at their feet are so insistent that the average person is not up to coping with a Dalmatian...
...film's sunny beginning is soon shattered by Cruella De Vil, who hatches a plot to steal the puppies in order to satisfy her obsessive desire for a Dalmatian fur coat. De Vil is Disney's wildest villain: slinky, sophisticated, overbearing, and utterly deranged. Given the chance to indulge herself by playing such a comically evil figure, Glenn Close delivers a masterful and unrestrained performance. Close gets to verbally abuse every character in the movie, shouting her insults with contempt and devilish glee. She also perfects the look of materialistic dementia that defines Cruella's character. Because the puppies...