Now we get to the shows based directly on Disney movies. And One Saturday Morning’s collection isn’t by any means the first. Aladdin and The Little Mermaid premièred in the Disney Afternoon, and The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh originally aired in the late eighties but was rerun on One Saturday Morning. And though I liked that latter show a lot as a little kid, 101 Dalmatians was the best Disney movie-turned series; and I won’t lie, a part of that does come from how much the show disregarded the movie it’s based on.
One Hundred and One Dalmatians is an enjoyable, subtle Disney movie that benefits from its cuteness, but also a bleak tone and fantastic villain. 101 Dalmatians is an energetic character and joke-driven comedy with not much of the films’ cute factor. The movie was set in London, the show on some middle American farm. It’s almost going out of its way to distance itself from the movie, but ultimately it works for the show’s benefit. A farm after all is a lot bigger of an environment for the puppies to have adventures in. The show primarily focussed on three puppies, Lucky, Rolly, and Cadpig, as well as a farmyard chicken who wants to be a dalmatian called Spot. Lucky was the stereotypical cool leader, not much different from Baloo in Jungle Cubs (both voiced by Pamela Adlon), and Rolly was mostly the dumb fat one. But Cadpig was some kind of eccentric genius, and she was my favourite. She’s wonderfully nuts and Kath Soucie (who also voiced Rolly) is pretty great. Spot, voiced by Tara Strong, was also a fun character, as she’s a great mix of sassy and neurotic. Often their adventures put them up against Cruella DeVil who lives not far away from the Dearly Farm. And she is by far the best part of the show. Where in the film, Cruella was a terrifying, violent psychopath, easily one of Disney’s best villains, here she’s one of the most hysterical prima donnas I’ve ever seen. Voiced with superb ceremoniousness by April Winchell (you’ve probably noticed by now that Pamela Adlon, Kath Soucie, and April Winchell are in almost all of these shows), Cruella is played with so much over-the-top egotism, rashness, and hilarious quirkiness, that every episode prominently featuring her is usually really funny. Such is the case with the show’s Christmas Carol spoof “A Christmas Cruella” which I've already talked about. Michael McKean and David L. Lander reunite as Horace and Jasper, and as usual work off each other well. And once in a while Cruella’s insane family would show up, like P.H. DeVil, Cecil B. DeVil (this show liked puns), and her overbearing mother Malevola.
This series was developed by Jim Jinkins, the creator of Doug, which is so weird considering the fast-paced comedy and energy of 101 Dalmatians is the direct opposite of Doug. This isn’t typical Disney animation of the Disney Afternoon kind, nor is it a unique style like Pepper Ann. It’s actually very inspired by Warner Bros. There are times where you can see it trying to be Tiny Toons or even Animaniacs -Cadpig’s got a real Dot Warner thing going on. Hell, in one episode where Spot’s supposed to watch an egg, it turns into a Buttons and Mindy sketch. For this, 101 Dalmatians now feels more like an experiment to see if a certain comedy and style could work for Disney. And maybe half the time I’d say, it does. The Cruella episodes really are the ones worth watching, and while others can be funny, you can see easier what they’re trying to mimic. This was the third and last show to première in 1997, and was at the front of the line-up for most of that first year. But it lasted just two seasons (technically one), wrapping up in the spring of 1998, so that another show based on a Disney movie could replace it in the fall.
Hercules:
This show wasn’t a very good idea. It’s not like Hercules is one of Disney’s better films. But also, for the show Disney was trying to make, it didn’t fit with the continuity of the film. It’s supposedly set between Hercules’ teenagehood and adulthood (you know, the montage that Danny DeVito sung over). So with his knowledge of who he is and strict training regimen to be a hero, of course he’d have time to go to high school! Say what you will about Aladdin, but at least that show wasn’t trying to be a medieval Arabian Saved by the Bell. And this pattern of turning movies into high school shows weirdly persisted for Disney, as they did the same thing years later with The Emperor’s New School (ugh, just writing that is painful).
Hercules, voiced by Tate Donovan reprising his role from the film, is a student at Prometheus Academy where he’s friends with loose versions of Cassandra, voiced by Sarah Bernhard, and Icarus, voiced by French Stewart. Hercules is no more interesting than in the film, Cassandra seems to be just a goth girl (during a time when there were actually Goths), and Icarus is the comic relief sidekick you’d see played by Rob Schneider in a live-action movie -thankfully French Stewart is a step up from that. No Rip Torn, but James Woods is back as Hades, being bothered by minor crises throughout the show. And this, with a definite downgrade in the writing for his character, takes some of the comedic and villainous bite out of him. He’s still funny once in a while, but Hades is really exploited and you can tell the writers don’t have enough material for him. Oh, and isn’t Hades supposed to think Hercules is dead all this time? -good job with the continuity guys. Bobcat Goldthwaite and Matt Frewer also return to their roles (Does Meg ever appear on this series?; it could really benefit from some Susan Egan). Those Muses from the movie are also shoehorned into a lot of episodes. There are adventures and tie-ins to Greek mythology obviously, but more often they’re run-of-the-mill school stories with a slight twist. There’s an episode where Zeus turns himself into a mortal to experience high school like his son. But hold on, if he could do that why the hell doesn’t he just use that power to make Hercules a god?? And I’m pretty sure confronting a bully and learning a lesson isn’t quite what the god Zeus would do when in disguise on Earth.
The problem with the animation for this series, and indeed the others like it, is that it’s trying to look like the movie despite having a quarter of the budget. And so the detailed designs and expressiveness work against the Saturday morning format. Simply, Hercules isn’t cartoony enough, and this attempt at translating the look of the film into television makes it always look awkward, especially when it’s trying to pull off zany comedy. 101 Dalmatians completely changed the look, simplifying it for the medium and tone of the show, and that’s probably what Hercules should have done.
This show somehow managed to get a ton of great guest voices, like Jennifer Aniston, Vince Vaughn, William Shatner, Cary Elwes, Dom DeLuise, Eric Idle, Ed Asner, Carl Reiner, Harvey Korman, Jason Alexander, Jennifer Love Hewitt, a Frasier ransacking of David Hyde-Pierce, Jane Leeves, and Peri Gilpin, and Dan Castellaneta voicing Homer as an admittedly clever in-joke. I guess they all owed Eisner favours. But celebrity voices don’t help the series. Nobody wants to see a Greek god in high school, certainly not without much effort. Hercules the animated series, was just a way to capitalize on the film with the cheapest set-up possible, and it’s run of only a year shows how there wasn’t much substance to it.
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