I really liked the part where... AAAARARARARRRRGGGGHHH!

But seriously, I thought the part was good where they... bwaAAAaaAAAaAAAAAAAAARRRGGggGGGGHH!

Alright, alright. Let me start at the beginning. Ever since the first time I saw Disney's original animated 101 Dalmatians, I've had a crush on Cruella DeVil.

It's true. I don't care what those "truth" ads say about how smoking doesn't make you look sexy. If you do it right, it's sexy as hell, and Cruella... oooh baby, she does it right. You throw in that 97 pound, flat-chested Gwyneth Palrow physique and a two-tone hairdo and baby, I'm all over that like glitter on a drag queen.

Seriously, I've got an old, dog-eared copy of What if Cruella DeVil was your Lunch Lady? shoved under my mattress soaked in enough of my DNA that scientists could use it to clone me.

I never saw the first live action 101 Dalmatians movie because Glenn Close just didn't do it for me as Cruella. I suppose she captures the essence of the cartoon character as well as a real human could, but why bother. That's like saying that wet cement captures the essence of tapioca pudding as well as a non-food item could. What's the point?

I can imagine that there will be similar discussions going on about Angelina Jolie as Lara Croft when that Tomb Raider movie comes out next year. Well, I've never been a big fan of video games, huge breasted or otherwise, so I'll leave that discussion to the glassy-eyed, callused-thumbed videophiles. All I have to say is that I don't care if Angelina Jolie is hired for the Dom DeLuise role in Cannonball Run IV, I'd still think it was incredible casting. Come on, say what you will about matching an actress to the character, no matter how it turns out, it's still freakin' Angelina Jolie...

Right, 102 Dalmatians. Sorry. By far the strongest part of the movie, both from a plot standpoint and artistically was... BrrrglllbrrrrrrralllaaalllaaaaaAAaAAAAAahhhahahaaa!

Ahem. I mean, I loved where they... AhahAAAGLAAAAAASHFFFFFFttTTThhTThHTT!

Goddammit, this movie had Gerard Depardieu in it. Gerard freaking Depardieu. As if it wasn't bad enough that this was a sequel to a crappy live action movie based on a 1960s Disney cartoon, they ALSO have to put Gerard Depardieu in it wearing leopard skin pajamas and a Dolph Lundgren mullet.

At least the full sized LEOPARD HEAD in his CROTCH distracted the camera from too many close-ups of his big, fat, French clefted face. I swear to God, every part of this man's head looks like a little butt. His nose, his chin, the guy has cleft eyeballs for crying out loud.

I do give the movie praise for one small gracious detail... Okay, Gerard is introduced into the film via a runway fashion show, and he comes out from behind the curtains wearing this huge, full-length fur coat. Now I don't know if it was really in slow motion, or if it was that slow-mo thing that your brain does as you're watching a semi-truck barreling down on a basket full of babies and kittens in the middle of the road. Either way, I swear at this point Amanda and I actually, literally, audibly gasped and clenched hands. There was an unspoken terror between us that screamed in unison, "He's gonna get to the end of that runway, and he's gonna drop that coat, and there's gonna be nothing but a leopard skin g-string and 600 pounds of snail-fed belly underneath!"

Luckily for us, the children present, and what I'm sure was a very expensive projector that would have been destroyed by the act of passing that image through its lenses, Gerard dropped his robe to reveal a completely stupid, yet graciously modest fur ensemble. Thank you Disney. We shall all live another day.

But seriously though, back to the review. I honestly can't complain about the ggglglrlgrgrrraaaahhhhh!

Okay, I admit, I liked this movie's mmMMmMmplllllthhhhh!

All right. I tried to find something nice to say, but I can't. Even Entertainment Weekly gave this movie a mere D+, and they can only write on a fourth grade level.

When I saw this movie, the only other people in the theater were a Mexican mom and her three kids. I swear to God, I am not making this up. About halfway through the movie, the little girl gets up and just starts running around the auditorium, crying and screaming at the top of her little lungs in Spanish. Now I'm not bi-lingual or anything, but I think if I'm ever kidnapped by the Tijuana Mafia, I have a pretty good idea how to say "I hate this crap and I want to go home!"

All right, I'm gonna level with you. The only thing that I liked about this movie is the fact that from now on I'm free to go to karaoke bars and get totally loaded because I now have a designated driver.

Okay let's go back to the beginning again.

Through the magic of computer generated special effects, 102 Dalmatians features a dalmatian puppy that has, get this, no spots. Going in, I thought that this was going to be a major plot point. It turns out, it's a minor inconvenience to the plot at best.

Cruella wants 102 puppies with spots. She gets 101 puppies with spots and one without spots. You would think that this would necessitate the finding of another spotted puppy, but in fact only leads to Cruella being pissed off and settling for 101.

Bear with me for a minute. I'd just like to take a moment to review some of my favorite films of the past 30 years.

Ghostbusters - A green potato looking ghost terrorizes a hotel. Sigourney Weaver and Rick Moranis turn into giant demon dogs. The Stay Puft Marshmallow Man destroys a big chunk of New York.

Back to the Future II - Flying DeLorean. Hoverboards. Young Marty/Biff/Jennifer meet old Marty/Biff/Jennifer.

Star Wars - A crapload of aliens. A crapload of spaceships. The Death Star explodes.

What do all of these things have in common, and just what, pray tell, do they have to do with 102 Dalmatians?

Unlike the digitally enhanced puppy in 102, all of these special effects were done without computers, back in the days when filmmakers had to be really creative with optical effects, rather than just throwing money at digital artists to color in Jim Carrey's Grinch eyes yellow because he's too much of a puss to wear the colored contacts.

(ILM fanboys, please refrain from writing in and saying "Actually the digital readouts on the Death Star console in Scene 132-A were made with a IBM 650 system using punch cards." Okay man, I'm just making a point here.)

The explosion of the digital post-production industry has made possible great strides in not doing things the easy way. Rather than finding a dalmatian pup that was naturally sparse-spotted and just painting the damn thing in with white greasepaint before shooting a scene, Disney actually paid a team of about 70 digital artists to sit there in post production and painstakingly digitally remove the spots from this dog on every single frame of the film that it appears in.

To finally answer the question that you've no doubt been wondering, the only reason I exposed myself to this surefire stinker at all is because my beloved girlfriend Amanda was one of those artists.

Using the bushel baskets full of money that the mouse paid her during her months as a digital spot remover, she just went out and bought herself a new car. Do you know how much greasepaint you can buy for the price of a new car? About 47 gallons. And we're not talking Halloween store crap here. This is the good theatrical stuff. Multiply that by what they paid the whole spot removal team, and that's enough to cover a dalmatian puppy like, I don't know, three gajillion times?

But who am I to tell Disney how to run their studio, right? It's all good with me. Finally my alcoholic ass has somebody to cart it around after one too many coffeepots full of Pabst Blue Ribbon. On the merit of that, and that alone, 102 Dalmatians, I award you with one single chainsaw.

From now on, I'm gonna be seeing spots a lot more often.

Spoilers. Geez, I got nothin'.

At the end Cruella gets baked into this huge cake, which for some reason, I found incredibly hilarious. Maybe it was like the chattering laughter of a madman who's finally been pushed over the brink of insanity, but when I saw Glenn Close hobbling around with her little hands sticking out of that gigantic confection I was practically on the floor with the giggles.

There was also that painful disclaimer to quiet the whiny protesters that picketed the studio when this movie was in production. As long-time misreviews readers know, I'm not one to frequently side with Disney, but in this case I have to make an exception. This was a really stupid protest.

Basically what the Doggy Activists were saying is that dalmatians don't make good pets, and portraying them as cute and friendly animals causes every single person who sees the movie to run out, buy a dalmatian, and then club it to death with an aluminum bat two days later when they find out that it can't really operate a VCR.

So right at the beginning of the end credits, there's a screen of text that says, to paraphrase, "Listen up you dumb shits. Don't go out and buy yourself a dalmatian now, and then come to us all pissed off when you find out that it's blind, retarded, and has a skin disorder that makes Seal look like Denzel Washington. Most of the dalmatians in this movie were computer generated because we could only find about four of them that could stand up on their own, let alone bark on cue. A pet is a lifelong responsibility that you obviously can't handle if you were stupid enough to pay to see this movie. Go buy a Beanie Baby, and try your best not to swallow it in the car on the ride home."