102 Dalmatians is the 2000 sequel to Disney's 1996 live-action adaptation of 101 Dalmatians. It was directed by Kevin Lima, with the screenplay by Kristen Buckley, Brian Regan, Bob Tzudiker, and Noni White, and the story by Buckley and Regan. It was released on November 22, 2000. Only Glenn Close and Tim McInnerny reprised their roles as Cruella and her timid butler Alonzo from the original film.
Cruella undergoes hypnotherapy to love puppies and abhor fur coats and is released from jail to do community service for a struggling animal shelter, warned that if she ever repeats the offense, her entire fortune will go to the shelter. Unfortunately, Big Ben's chimes break the hypnosis and Cruella reverts back to her fur-loving puppy-hating self. Cruella makes an agreement with another animal skin coat lover from France named Le Pelt (Gérard Depardieu) to make the coat, planning to use 102 dalmatians this time (including a hood that would be made of the fur of Oddball, a leucistic dalmatian puppy who never developed her spots).
The main human characters in this film are Chloe Simon (Alice Evans), a young probation officer who now owns Dipstick (one of the fifteen puppies from the first film) and is skeptical about giving Cruella another chance, and Kevin Shepard (Ioan Gruffudd), the owner of the dog shelter Cruella is assigned to help, who is so excited that his shelter is finally doing well to be the least bit suspicious of Cruella (which comes to bite him later in the film). This film invoked Polly Wants a Microphone to provide a talking animal character.
The movie got a video game release, 102 Dalmatians: Puppies to the Rescue, but it's only loosely based on this movie. In fact, it features more elements from the original animated 1961 film than this.
This film provides examples of:
- All of the Other Reindeer: Oddball, the spotless Dalmatian.
- Always Camp: Cruella and Le Pelt.
- Advertised Extra: Domino and Little Dipper are prominently featured in promotional material for the film, as well as Dottie their mother, but they are not utilised as much as Oddball.
- Ascended Extra: Alonzo was a two-scene character in the first movie. But the character (and the actor who played him) is now one of Cruella's main henchmen in the sequel.
- Ascended Fanboy: Le Pelt, to Cruella. He refers to her as his inspiration as a fur fashionista and becomes her partner in crime.
- Award-Bait Song: My Spot In The World
by Lauren Christy, though it is only featured on the soundtrack and not in the movie itself. - Baby Talk: How the Twilight Bark is spread across London, courtesy of Oddball and translated by both Waddlesworth and Kevin: "Tubble: Bad man gwabs twee wittle 'potted doggies."Translation
- Bag of Kidnapping: This remains the main mode of transporting the stolen Dalmatian puppies.
- Big Bad Duumvirate: Cruella teams up with Jean Pierre Le Pelt in her latest scheme.
- Bizarrchitecture: Cruella's London mansion. It looks fairly normal on the outside, but the inside is a completely different story. There are no windows for a start and the first floor looks like it is underground and instead of electric lights there are torches. In other words, it is like Hell.
- Body Horror: "Ella"'s transformation back to Cruella has her hair get messy, her shoulders pop up, and her fingernails turn into claws.
- Comically Missing the Point: Alonzo took Cruella's statement rather literally.Cruella: Alonzo, we're going to make them pay!
Alonzo: Yes. How much?- After Waddlesworth flies for the first time, he realises he is not a Rottweiler at all: he is a Retriever (ie a Bird Dog).
- Company Cross References: Kevin and Chloe's dogs see the famous spaghetti kiss in Lady and the Tramp, via a VHS copy of it.
- A Dog Ate My Homework: Albeit an example that's not related to school. Probation Officer Chloe Simon wants one of her charges, Ewan, to show a pay stub and he says he can't because a dog ate it. Chloe, of course, does not believe him and asks if he could not come up with a better story. Frustrated, he makes one up about being abducted by aliens at Piccadilly Circus. Ewan eventually shows a photograph of him and his boss at the dog shelter and a drool-covered IOU note he received instead of the pay stub because the shelter is low on funds.
- The Dog Bites Back: Alonzo, tired of being a wormy little man, manages to fight and defeat Le Pelt.Who's the little man now?
- Easily Forgiven: Alonzo was still free at the end of the film and there was no mention of him being on probation. Also, he was on friendly terms with the heroes.
- Falsely Reformed Villain: Cruella undergoes a genuine Heel–Face Brainwashing so that she loves animals, but it later wears off. However, she then continues to act as a reformed person to hide her new plan to turn the puppies into fur coats.
- Frame-Up: Cruella pulls off a rather Inceptiony one of these. Not only does she frame Kevin for dognapping, but she also frames him for trying to frame her: when he asks why he would steal dogs, Cruella brings up how part of her probation means that if she falls off the wagon, all her wealth will be given to the dog shelter.
- Fur Bikini: One shows up during the fashion show.
- Hard Truth Aesop: Even if everyone deserves a second chance, not everyone will make good use of it. So if someone claims to have changed, proceed with caution and be willing to accept either outcome.
- Heel–Face Brainwashing: This is tried on Cruella de Vil through hypnosis. It initially works and she starts to lovingly embrace any puppy she sees, but it turns out that a loud clock noise can counteract it. And since this film is set in London, it is only a matter of time before good ol' Big Ben does exactly what it has been designed to do - go bong basically - and turns Cruella back into her evil self again and she goes right back to being Cruella to Animals.
- Heel–Face Turn: Alonzo, finally fed up with Cruella’s mistreatment on him, redeemed himself by fighting against Le Pelt and then frees Kevin and Chloe.
- Humiliation Conga: The villains get this, with Le Pelt being punched out by Alonzo, while Cruella gets thrown into a cake-making machine and baked.
- I Ate WHAT?!: A gag occurs when Chloe absentmindedly munches on a dog biscuit while watching the morning news, to which she soon looks down at her hand and realizes just what she's been eating.
- Jumping Out of a Cake: Clever inversion in the climax, where Cruella is apprehended by trapping her inside a cake.
- Just Train Wrong: Cruella De Vil travels on the Venice-Simplon Orient Express to Paris, hauled by preserved locomotive Flying Scotsman'. However, the train leaves from St. Pancras (whilst nowadays trains to Paris 'do' leave from St. Pancras, that wasn't the case in 2000), the train to Paris would have been the Eurostar, and while it is likely that Flying Scotsman hauled the VSOE at one time that year, it would have left from Victoria as an excursion train to points around Britain (steam locomotives are not permitted to operate in the Channel Tunnel).
- Large Ham: Gérard Depardieu gives Glenn Close a run for her money in terms of evil-hamminess.
- Leaning on the Fourth Wall: There's a mild Jump Scare which involves a cut to a closeup on Cruella's face and her saying "Surprise!" In-universe it is because she had just sneaked up on Chloe who found the plans for her coat. At the same time, it can seem like she is talking directly to the audience. The version of the scene that's in the trailer certainly plays it off as such.
- Made of Iron: Cruella somehow survives being stuffed in a hot oven and baked in a cake.
- Mistreatment-Induced Betrayal: Alonzo finally had enough of Cruella’s abuse.
- Mean Boss: Le Pelt is verbally abusive towards his employees.
- Meaningful Name:
- Oddball has no spots, Little Dipper had his father's tail, and Domino's ears are black with white spots.
- Cruella's psychologist is named Dr. Pavlov.
- And the fur-obsessed "fashion" artist from France is named Le Pelt.
- Minion with an F in Evil: Alonzo prior to his Heel–Face Turn.
- Nervous Wreck: Poor Alonzo the Butler, who has a twitch and a stutter. Considering that he works for a person like Cruella, it would be somewhat alarming if he wasn't this.
- N+1 Sequel Title: The movie is titled 102 Dalmatians, as opposed to the original's 101.
- Number of the Beast: In the opening scene, Cruella's prison cell is labeled Experiment #6660.
- Of Corsets Sexy: At one point, Cruella can be seen wearing a corset that shows off her upper body rather nicely.
- On One Condition: The terms of Cruella's probation state that if she ever repeats the offense she was incriminated for (stealing puppies), her entire fortune will be given to Kevin's animal shelter, whom she is doing her community service for. To get out of it once she reverts back to her old self, she frames Kevin for framing her of puppy napping to get the money.
- Painful Transformation: When Cruella snaps out of her brainwashing, she goes through several emotional and physical transformations. She goes into a trance, her hair turns into masses of springs, her shoulders pop out, she has a paranoid Freak Out in which the whole city has turned spotty, and, finally, her nails turn into claws.
- Pimped-Out Dress: Aside from Cruella's outfits, some of the outfits during the fashion show are pretty fancy.
- Polly Wants a Microphone: Waddlesworth, a talking macaw (voiced by Eric Idle) who thinks he is a Rottweiler.
- Put on a Prison Bus: Cruella and LePelt is last seen being hauled away by the local police after their plans are foiled.
- Revenge by Proxy: Cruella planned to get even with Dipstick by turning his puppies into a hood for her coat.Cruella: Ah, what fiendish justice! He escaped me, but I shall wreak my vengeance on the next generation.
- Spaghetti Kiss: Done with Kevin and Chloe while they are having dinner. Their dogs even watch the Trope Maker in action via a VHS copy of Lady and the Tramp.
- Tastes Like Chicken: Waddlesworth says this while chewing at the woodwork when he sees the puppies below.
- That Man Is Dead: When the therapy Cruella has been subjected to wears off, she tells Allonzo that "Ella's gone and Cruella is back".
- Those Two Guys: Domino and Little Dipper.
- Title Drop: Cruella wanted to add Dipstick's three puppies to her coat so, instead of 99 Dalmatians as she had originally planned, the coat would be made of 102.
- Uncatty Resemblance: The guests at Cruella's dinner party all resemble their dogs to some extent. Cruella's new dog Fluffy also has fur that resembles her two-toned hair.
- Vile Villain, Laughable Lackey: This sequel sees Cruella's butler Alonzo taking the role of the laughable lackey instead of Jasper and Horace. Alonzo has repeated Butt-Monkey moments where his hand gets hurt in rather a slapstick ways, particularly during his heists of puppies for Cruella's latest fur coat idea that requires the eponymous 102 dalmation puppies' skins, and it almost seems like his injured hand was intended to be symbolic of his villainy, as he throws his sling off just as he's cementing his Heel–Face Turn near the film's climax.
- Villain Decay: Cruella was noticeably less menacing than she was in the first (but still just as hammy).
- What Happened to the Mouse?: The movie makes no mention of Roger or Anita, Jasper or Horace, Pongo or Perdita, or Dipstick's siblings.
