102 Dalmatians (2000)

102 Dalmatians arrives from the year 2000, a Disney sequel to a live-action remake of an animated film, itself derived from Dodie Smith's 1956 novel. Glenn Close returns as Cruella de Vil, released from prison after a Pavlovian cure that collapses the instant Big Ben chimes. A fur coat, a Parisian furrier, a probation officer, and a great many puppies follow. The film's cultural ledger is blank. Every column reads zero, and this is not a failure of observation. There is nothing there to observe.

Consider Oddball, the puppy born without spots who yearns for them. Here is a premise that a later decade would have bent into a lesson about loving the body you were issued. This film instead ends with Oddball growing spots, meaning it rewards her for finally becoming normal. That is the opposite of a message, and it is delivered without a shred of self-awareness. Waddlesworth, a macaw convinced he is a Rottweiler, exists for jokes about a bird barking at cats. No identity is examined. No pronoun is negotiated. The parrot is funny, and then the parrot is gone.

Cruella is rich, cruel, and defeated by a cake. The film declines to draw conclusions about wealth, about the women's prison it uses as a set, or about the animal testing lab mentioned once in backstory and never revisited. It preaches nothing. It lectures nobody. It asks only that we watch a dog outwit a woman in a very large hat, and it considers that a full evening's work. As social commentary the thing is inert. As a document of what mainstream family entertainment looked like before every children's movie arrived with homework attached, it is almost restful.