Clyde Geronimi
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Connections, in both directions
The other, of course, is Cruella de Vil, played by Emma Stone with enough seething, over the top vengefulness to almost make one forget Glenn Close’s memorable Cruella in “101 Dalmatians” (1996) and “102 Dalmatians” (2000), both live-action sequels to Disney’s beloved 1961 animated classic, which is paid brief homage at the end of the new film.
Cruella , with its shoe-horned attempts at referencing 101 Dalmatians , proves just how thrilling but also limiting the exercise can be.
Opening in the UK and US on May 28, while simultaneously becoming available on Disney+, the film radiates a punk-ish spirit that caters to younger viewers who may not know the live-action 101 Dalmatians films which starred Glenn Close about 25 years ago — to say nothing of the 1961 animated original.
Her take on Cruella de Vil, in Disney’s live-action adaptation of its 1961 animated classic 101 Dalmatians , has, for a long time, felt positively definitive.
As a prequel to the 1961 animated feature One Hundred and One Dalmatians and the 1996 live-action movie 101 Dalmatians , Cruella focuses on the early days of the studio’s most despicable villain outside of Mary Poppins.
Written by Dana Fox and Tony McNamara and set in 1970s London, the live-action comedy is based on the “101 Dalmatians” movies and the Dodie Smith novel that preceded them.
Like other films produced by DreamWorks and Aardman Animation (Chicken Run, Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit), Flushed Away is loaded with groan-worthy puns ("Pardon me, my fly's undone," says The Toad when an insect he swallowed tries to escape) and pop-culture references (I spotted nods to James Bond, Superman, The Fly, Batman, Lady and the Tramp, Finding Nemo and Mary Poppins, among others), and it playfully mocks horror-movie clichés, as well (the old fisherman who takes Roddy to the docks where Rita can be found speaks into a bottle to make his voice echo).
Sharp-eyed viewers should watch for parodies of and winking nods to earlier Aardman works, as well as "The Lion King," "Lady and the Tramp" and other animated classics.
Kids will recognize throwaway homages to Lady and the Tramp and Finding Nemo , while grownups may blink at the sight of a cockroach reading Kafka’s Metamorphosis.
Additionally, there are sing-alongs for "The Unbirthday Song" and "All in the Golden Afternoon" plus the trivia challenge "Adventure in Wonderland," an approximation of a newly unearthed theme for the Cheshire Cat, "I'm Odd," performed--unless mine ears deceiveth me--by Jim Cummings, the company's current stand-in for Sterling Holloway, and the 1936 Mickey Mouse short Thru the Mirror (also available as part of the Walt Disney Treasures collection "Mickey Mouse in Living Color"), wherein Mickey falls asleep reading Through the Looking Glass and dreams of a room beyond his vanity mirror full of anthropomorphized furniture.
Debuting feature director Juan Antonio Bayona and first-time feature writer Sergio G. Sánchez have fashioned a chiller with direct echoes of The Others, along with debts to Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw and J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan.
Really, he's a vampire who thrives on his cult of personality; there's a reason that movie was called The Lost Boys.
With a nod to J.M. Barrie and "Peter Pan," these vampiric Lost Boys are living out every child's fantasy, but they would probably rather be normal kids than hanging upside down from the ceiling of a derelict, underground hotel.
And there are any number of non-videogame references as well, ranging from a ridiculous but adorable Wizard Of Oz visual joke to Firefly / Dollhouse star Alan Tudyk voicing Sugar Rush’s daffy, mostly affable King Candy in direct imitation of chortling Disney vet Ed Wynn (the Mad Hatter from 1951’s Alice In Wonderland and Uncle Albert in Mary Poppins).
Perhaps it is no surprise that a Disney film that celebrates outsiders (Ralph the ‘villain’ and Vanellope the ‘glitch’) over social cohesion should contain a variation of a character from Alice in Wonderland (Clyde Geronimi, Wilfred Jackson and Hamilton Luske, 1951), the most anarchic and unconventional of the classic Disney animated feature films.
So, yes, there are familiar elements here -- from children's-lit and children's-film classics as varied as 101 Dalmatians, Stuart Little, and Winnie the Pooh, but there's also a broad-and-bizarre stroke of Monty Python-style absurdity and more than a few welcome, modernized-yet-classical touches like a calypso band, D Lime, acting as a chorus to the film's urban adventuring.
The plot is all predictable, broad-strokes stuff — I mean, it’s basically Mary Poppins meets E.T. meets 101 Dalmatians, but with a talking bear — but the inspired comic setpieces set the movie apart.
In the interest of galvanizing the narrative and amping up the peril, King and McColl have devised a cheerfully silly, action-heavy chase plot that cribs heavily from “101 Dalmatians,” complete with its own Cruella de Vil: bleach-bobbed taxidermist Millicent Clyde ( Nicole Kidman ), who’s determined to nab one particular Peruvian breed of bear for her collection.
Alice in Wonderland (2010)
Directed by Tim Burton
influenced by Peter Pan (1953), Alice in Wonderland (1951)
Plot Visuals
It was revived in 1949, when the impending release of Cinderella had rejuvenated the animation studio, and the production of Alice in Wonderland hadn't yet descended into abject misery.
Oh, it was inspired by that book (and its sequel, "Through the Looking-Glass"), using the same characters and many similar motifs, but like Spielberg's "Hook" in relation with J.M. Barrie "Peter Pan", "Alice in Wonderland" is actually a variation on the source material more than a straight retelling of the original story.Also not unlike "Hook" is the way our protagonist, Alice ("Alice?"), is now older, has all but forgotten her famous adventures and has seemingly lost her "muchness".
Indeed, Alice’s story as told here rather closely resembles the story of Wendy Darling in the original “Peter Pan,” another heroine who hoped to avoid maturation by flying into fantasy.
This version of Alice in Wonderland was made by Disney, and is the most famous in a long line of many (you can find Alice films spanning from 1915 to 1999).
Note that the now-standard DisneyView option fills in the pillarbox bands on 16x9 displays for the length of the feature with Alice in Wonderland-themed artwork created expressly for this release by Michael Humphries.
Disney studio's produced and distributed it, apparently with noconcern over stepping on their original animated Alice in Wonderland (1951).
Everything is here from The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920), to the black brambles of Disney’s Sleeping Beauty (1959), to references to the Friday the 13th and Halloween series — and, of course, the requisite zombie tropes.
Garfield (2004)
Directed by Peter Hewitt
influenced by One Hundred and One Dalmatians (1961), Lady and the Tramp (1955)
Plot
The hand-me-down story line borrows from "101 Dalmatians," "Toy Story 2" and the animal pound interlude of "Lady and the Tramp."
The hand-me-down story line borrows from "101 Dalmatians," "Toy Story 2" and the animal pound interlude of "Lady and the Tramp."
Directed by first-time helmer Robert Stromberg from a script credited to “Beauty and the Beast” scribe Linda Woolverton, the film has a clever enough big-picture take on the “Sleeping Beauty” tale, yet it sputters and snags as it tries construct a coherent emotional arc, and its reference points from the 1959 animated original feel more dutiful than inspired.
Sure, she chews the scenery in some scenes, going over the top, but it is these moments where she’s paying homage to the original performance in 1959’s “Sleeping Beauty,” so I can forgive a bit of overacting there.
There’s a telling scene toward the beginning of Maleficent, a revisionist retelling of Sleeping Beauty from Disney, the same studio that made the classic fairy tale famous again with its animated version in 1959.
Translation: Expect some fundamental changes to the legend most people know from either Charles Perrault's original fairy tale La Belle au bois dormant or Disney's 1959 animated version Sleeping Beauty.
Outside of the design and the shape of the island on which things take place, it's connection to Peter Pan is superficial at best, for the scenario that plays out here, and even the character of Tinker Bell herself, are frankly incompatible with anything that went before.
The pixie, created by J.M. Barrie but repurposed as the Disney mascot soon after the release of their "Peter Pan" adaptation, has long been a top money maker for the studio, adorning all sorts of merchandise, most recently a new "Disney Fairies" line of products; in this sense, a Tinker Bell movie was inevitable.
The tactile, snow-capped Arendelle landscape, including Elsa’s ice-castle retreat (imagine Superman’s Fortress of Solitude with a more feminine touch), is “Frozen’s” other true marvel, enhanced by 3D and the decision to shoot in widescreen — a nod to the CinemaScope richness of “Sleeping Beauty” and “Lady and the Tramp.”
A fairy godmother is a fairy whom your parents invited to witness your christening, like the three fairies in Sleeping Beauty (at least, it’s a christening in the fairy tale by Charles Perrault).
(In Disney's 1950s Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty, both the Stepmother and Maleficent were voiced by Eleanor Audley.)
Pan's Labyrinth (2006)
Directed by Guillermo del Toro
influenced by Alice in Wonderland (1951)
Themes
It's as if del Toro had uncovered the darker aspects of Lewis Carroll's Alice In Wonderland adventures, the dormant elements ignored by Disney and television (though not by Jan Svankmajer in his disturbing 1988 gem, Alice), and found a home for them in his own fractured fairy tale.
Indeed, visually the picture's above reproach, opening up the play well beyond the parameters of the stodgily theatrical Hook and 2003's lovely but claustrophobic Peter Pan.
A perverse lollapalooza of loaded images and disquieting implications, P.J. Hogan's live-action Peter Pan is this year's most intriguing Freudian shipwreck, resurrecting the darkness and poetic pessimism of J.M. Barrie's play--and Peter and Wendy, Barrie's own novelization--that has been all but forgotten since Disney's well-regarded 1953 treatment.
The Last Days of Disco (1998)
Directed by Whit Stillman
influenced by Lady and the Tramp (1955)
Dialogue Themes
So many times there are scenes in which characters say things that feel rehearsed, lines that they've cooked up and saved for the group, like in one diatribe about Disney's Lady and the Tramp.
Yet, Stillman's direction and dialogue here seem looser, more hip than in his previous outings: Two suitors vying for the same woman engage in a pointed deconstruction of Lady and the Tramp; an impromptu, after-hours dance of flirtation slyly moves from the living room to the bedroom.
They'll argue anything, as evidenced by a psychoanalytical quarrel over "Lady and the Tramp," in which one character opines that the movie encourages women to invest romantically in parolees and bad boys.
When they're not shaking their booties on the dance floor, the trendy friends can be found engaging in idle chatter about everything from the psycho-social ramifications of "Lady and the Tramp" to post-modern reinterpretations of Shakespearean tragedies, occasionally taking time out to vent the romantic and professional insecurities that have become a hallmark of Stillman characters.
Matilda (1996)
Directed by Danny DeVito
influenced by One Hundred and One Dalmatians (1961)
Characters
She is compared to Cruela DeVille in "101 Dalmatians."
Scarlett Overkill’s bedtime story about three little pigs (the Minions) and a Big Bad Wolf (herself) unfolds in cut-out and puppet animation that pays madcap homage to legendary puppet animators of the 1950s and 1960s, like Jiri Trnka, while Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf plays on the soundtrack.
"Lady and the Tramp": Robert and Giselle have lunch at an Italian restaurant named Bella Notte, the title of a memorable song from the 1955 tale of puppy love.