101 Dalmatians (Directed by Stephen Heyek. Starring Glenn Close, Jeff Daniels, Joely Richardson, Hugh Laurie.)

A REMAKE of the classic animated Disney flick, this time filmed in live-action format with real humans and real dogs, 101 Dalmatians is an absolute delight, and if you have any young kids, it would be cruel of you to let them miss it. In fact, even if you don’t, you’re well advised to borrow a kid for the day, just so you can get a chance to see it yourself.

Its most notable feature is a brilliantly blood-curdling performance from Glenn Close as Cruella deVil, the fur-fixated superbitch who kidnaps the cute little fluffy puppies of the title: her costume and make-up is absolutely perfect for the role, and she puts Jeff Daniels and Joely Richardson to shame. The dogs’ acting, also, is quite incredible, often displaying more intelligence then you’d find in a thousand Keanu Reeves flicks: and the script is pretty amusing for the most part (there’s a taxidermist called Skinner, and a dog who pisses everywhere named Whizzer).

Of course, the film is not without its faults: Jeff Daniels (now shorn of the beard he sported in Two Days in the Valley) is annoyingly two-dimensional, and Joely Richardson affects her usual and increasingly irritating, posh-voiced English lady act. The bad guys aren’t very convincing, either (Hugh Laurie as a villain? Get to fuck) but the whole thing is so enchanting that you have to consign such reservations to the dustbin. Apart from Close’s fantastic performance, the dogs are a total joy to behold: Dalmatians are so cute that cartoons really can’t do them justice, so this was a flick that genuinely had to be made. A must for that pre-Christmas day out. (CF)