Christmas: A Christmas Cruella

Hello & welcome back to the Christmas celebration here on A Look at Disney.  Well, we've now looked at two film adaptions and a ride layover that never happened.  So, where do we go now? The world of television.  TV shows doing their own on A Christmas Carol is nothing new but with this territory,  there does come one problem in that sometimes for the show to continue on, the lessons that are learned in these episodes sometimes cannot stick, if the series is to continue onward.  And with these two episodes, there also comes another problem in that,  Disney villains are used as the Scrooge stand-ins.  In today's case,  it is Cruella De Vil.   And  this also does another standard thing a gender flip of the Scrooge character as there quite a few films out there with female Scrooges, perhaps most notably, A Diva's Christmas Carol starring Vanessa Williams. 

101 Dalmatians: The Series is a One Saturday Morning cartoon from the '97 -'98 season  that lasted for two seasons, the second in syndication and in the first season, they aired the Christmas episode, A Christmas Cruella.   Now as for the series, it took inspiration from both the animated film and the live action remake but it's best to think of the series taking  place in it's own timeline as the series takes place in America and all of the characters have American accents.  And the show decided to use Dearly as the last name from the remake instead.  So, with that in mind,  let's get the review started.

Episode Title

A Christmas Cruella

The episode title easily tells you what you are in for.

The Plot

Now like with The Muppet Christmas Carol and the 2009 film,  I won't be going over the whole plot as it's an episode based on A Christmas Carol, and if you've seen any take on A Christmas Carol, then you know the beats.  The biggest changes here being what characters are substituted for the classic roles.  You already know that Cruella is our Scrooge.  Anita is our Bob Cratchit, Lucky is the Tiny Tim of the episode but the episode really doesn't use him for anything other than to tug at the heartstrings.  And this episode also seem to does what Muppet Christmas Carol did with having two characters feel the Marley role using Horace and Jasper.  Now, the other big thing is the why as to why Cruella came to hate Christmas.  Apparently as a child, she wanted a puppy and her parents were never home on Christmas day. Yeah, ouch!  I'll get into more detail with my issues with this in the character section.  Now, let's head down to the characters section.

Characters

Now, I'll be breaking this down into Main Character, Supporting Characters and then ghosts.  With that out of the way, let's begin.

Main Character

Cruella De Vil played by April Winchell 

This is perhaps my biggest issue with this episode as the idea of using a villain as the Scrooge stand-in, I feel like it lessens the importance of the story that is being told.  I know what I said up top about looking at this show as being it's own thing but even within the show,  Cruella is still portrayed as a villain.  So, I find it rather hard to sympathize with her because of that and even the trips to her past painted her in an ugly light.   I mean I can understand always being angry that her parents were never home on Christmas as that is messed up and it was shown that they didn't truly love her. But, Cruella was still shown as being a brat.  From as a baby having her nanny shipped off to other heinous deeds from hurting kids that did get puppies, when she was about 10 or 12.  And look as I said before, not having her parents there is rough for a kid but this episode is trying to tell me that Cruella ended up the way that she did because of not getting a puppy.  Now look, it's clear that this episode was more interested in playing up the comedy rather than telling a straight forward version of A Christmas Carol.

Supporting Characters

Anita voiced by Kath Soucie 

A I said up top,  Anita feels the Cratchit role and they made a nice attempt here such as having Cruella fire her and trying to get us to feel bad for her that way. And I swear, when we saw the Dearly's Christmas during the Present segment, it was less of A Christmas Carol and more of The Gift of The Magi.  As it was shown that the family couldn't keep the presents that they bought for on another.

Roger voiced by Jeff Bennett 

Roger's interactions with Cruella were pretty good and I did like hoe he stood up to the devil to get his wife the day off for Christmas. Granted, it caused her to lose her job but she did get it back in the end.

Lucky  voiced by Pamela Segall Adlon

I'd like the idea of using one of the puppies in the Tiny Tim role and admittedly the idea that Lucky had to get a cast because of a pine needle infection was funny but they really didn't do much with the idea.

Ghosts

Horace and Jasper voiced by David L.  Lander & Michael McKean 

So, this episode decided to go with the dual ghosts for the Marley stand-in and well, I'm sorry but if you do that, I'm going to compare you to Marley and Marley from The Muppet Christmas Carol and say that they did it better.  Now admittedly, they were playing it up more for laughs and it was kinda funny that they were from a corporation that handles these kind of things on a regular basis.

Cadpig (Ghost of Christmas Past) also voiced by Kath Soucie 

It was clear that when we got to the three spirits that the episode was playing it more laughs because when Cruella refused to go with the Ghost of Christmas Past,  she threatened to use special effects and then did. Which was actually pretty funny and in a way from what I remember of the show, it did make sense to use Cadpig in this role as she in the brains of the group. And the one that was most willing to listen to other's problems.

Ghost of Christmas Present (Rolly) also voiced by Kath Soucie

Now, here I like what they did with Rolly as the Ghost of Christmas Present and casting him as that ghost made a lot of sense being the friendly and joyful that he was and you could really feel the warmth coming through but he wasn't afraid to show anger at Cruella for not getting that she's ruined other's Christmas.

Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come (Spot) voiced by Tara Strong

Now, here again Spot as The Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come was actually pretty funny and she again broke the fourth wall by saying that she had a big song and dance number but it was cut.  And I do admit that it was funny that in Cruella's future,  her body was buried in a pet cemetery. The idea that Cruella was surrounded by animals considering that her hated of animals.

My Final Thoughts

While I don't think this is a bad episode, it does highlight some of the problems with a TV show doing a Christmas Carol episode.  It feels rather problematic in some of it's execution.  It's not bad but not something that I would say is worth checking out unless you are really interested. Join me tomorrow as we head to (Disney Junior's) Neverland as we see how well a pirate take on A Christmas Carol can go with Captain Hook as our Scrooge stand-in as we look at...

Captain Scrooge