Word: vil
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Favorite Martian and The Parent Trap.) Moreover, Disney's live-action films all seem to be reduced to slapstick violence between a paper-cut villain and a cheesy hero. And yet, even in last year's dreadful remake of 101 Dalmations, Glenn Close found room to make Cruella De Vil somewhat entertaining...
...this last element--the villain of the story's formula--that falls hopelessly flat. The most outstanding animated features are those with the strongest villains; think of Cruella de Vil, Ursula and Jafar in Disney's best. Rasputin, however, is a bumbling idiot. He shrieks and whines and has the further distasteful attribute of losing his bodily limbs every so often (apparently, the animators want to make it very clear that villains must be repulsively ugly). Moreover, he seems to have absolutely no motivation for his curses. He constantly howls "The Romanovs must be destroyed!" but there seems...
Every detail of Close's character is perfect. Crammed into an array of fantastic furs she sports the stylish half black/half white De Vil hair-do. Even her long red gloves have press-on nails. De Vil is constantly armed with a long cigarette, and she drops her ashes on the feet of any subservient fool she meets...
...film's closing scenes are the only time when the story diverges from its animated predecessor. Screenwriter John Hughes can't resist turning the film into a hybrid of one of his "Home Alone" movies, featuring a drawn-out sequence of physical comedy. De Vil's henchmen Horace and Jasper play the Daniel Stern and Joe Pesci roles, as they are flung through windows and into frozen ponds. Cruella ends up the victim of much of this comic buffoonery, as she is kicked by a horse, squashed by an overweight hog, and immersed in a vat of molasses. This sequence...
...Dalmatians" has been updated to the nineties, so that Cruella is a fashion mogul with a large corporation and Roger designs video games. In the movie, Roger is working on a game featuring Dalmatians, but he cannot find the perfect villain for his creation until he meets De Vil, whose dementia serves as a twisted inspiration...