Review by Andrea Birgers

With the multitude of dogs, and one of Disney's more memorable cartoon villains, One Hundred and One Dalmatians is a fun romp. While the movie will appeal more to kids, most of the bonus features on this two-disc DVD set are for grown-up fans.

Based on the children's novel by Dodie Smith, this is the first Disney animated feature to be set in the present (in this case, it's London of the early 1960s.) Roger and Anita are the humans brought together by their dalmatians Pongo and Perdita. Instead of a human baby, the two couples are blessed with a litter of 15 puppies.

Enter Cruella DeVil, an old schoolmate of Anita's. She really really really loves fur, and she covets the litter. She sends her two Cockney henchmen to take the pups and add them to her collection of 84 dalmatians stashed in a barn. In a movie teeming with cute and comical animals, the flamboyant Cruella steals the show. She sports a long cigarette holder, exhaling yellow clouds of smoke, and drives like a maniac, while shouting G-rated insults at her bumbling henchmen. She might be a little scary for the youngest of viewers, but mostly she's a fun counterpoint to the pups.

On disc one, there are two sets of pop-up trivia that synch with the movie. "For the Family," concentrates more on the onscreen action -- we find out how many spots the different dogs had, or the foreign language titles, for instance. "For the Fan" has more factoids about the production of the movie, such as who animated which character. Also on this disc, and skippable, is a music video of "Cruella deVil" sung by Selena Gomez.

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