These early boring Disney Movies are a bit hard to talk about because there is so little interesting to talk about. It hasn't been common, but this marks the second movie of the Disney Classic's that is starting to feel more churned out. As with other lackluster Disney Movies, it makes it hard to say a whole lot about it, but I'll do my best.
We open with a dalmatian leading his owner to meet up with a lady and then the two fall in love, time skip a few years later and the dog of each owner has children. The plot going forward is the wife has a friend (And no, you never find out why it is she puts up with her) named Cruella De Vill, and she wants the puppies to make a new coat. Of course, she doesn't say this outright, but that is the goal. When the two won't sell the puppies, Cruella steals them. The Dogs now track down the puppies to get them back. There are no twists in the plot after this, it's a simple rescue mission.
I always remember a lot of people saying Cruella is great, but I don't see that myself. When Disney makes a villain who is just evil for the sake of evil, they can sometimes hit the nail on the head like with Maleficent. But Cruella is just a bitch. She isn't really funny, she's not threatening, she doesn't have anything about her personality to make her stand out, she is just really mean and dumb. I can't take her seriously as a villain, and she wasn't funny enough to make up for that.
The plot only even moves forward because all of the villains are incredibly inept. Cruella and both her two flunky's keep failing not because our heroes are clever or anything, they are just idiots. Had there never been a rescue attempt on the dogs I don't believe for a second the skinning of them would ever have happened, they would have screwed it all up themselves. It's not even incompetent enough to laugh at, it's just sad to watch.
However, two jokes work for me. The first is the 'Cruella De Vill' song that the husband rights near the beginning. The first song he writes that truly becomes a hit was written purely out of spite for how terrible a person Cruella was. There was no deeper meaning, no witty wordplay or clever metaphors, just a guy going 'You know what? You suck, I'm making a song dunking on you'. It was the original YouTube dis-track. The other was the old maid telling two guys she doesn't care what parliament says, they aren't coming in. The thought of this little old lady telling the government to piss off amusing me more than it probably should.
It's just not a movie that has anything interesting to say, and lacking the fantastic visuals of previous movies. I reiterate what I said in the beginning, this is where Disney is starting to feel like it's willing to churn out a movie just because they feel they need to. I find this the most skippable movie of any of the ones I have revisited so far.