Well, there was also mixed feelings for 'Little Patch of Heaven', but at least there was much more of a Disney feel in that sing-along-songs video than in '101 Dalmatians Pongo and Perdita'.
A shame because even to a young adult who has been a huge Disney fan all her life the Disney Sing-Along-Songs videos are fun, charming, educational and nostalgic, with a great chance to bask in one's favourite childhood memories and know one's favourite Disney songs better. There are some fantastic ones in the series, especially the Disneyland and Christmas outings as well as the 'Zip a Dee Doo Dah', 'Be Our Guest', 'Heigh-Ho' and 'Circle of Life' videos. Almost all of them are worth watching in fact, and most of them very good to great.
'101 Dalmatians Pongo and Perdita' is not by all means unwatchable. The dogs are adorable and show great personality, the video is beautifully shot, the set design is wonderfully elaborate and who can't help getting nostalgic in the "Following the Leader" number especially. Two songs are good, and they are "Zip a Dee Do Dah" and more successfully "Following the Leader", the most well sung, the catchiest and the most entertainingly staged. The sequence of stupid dog tricks is fun too.
Because of the theme it must have been a struggle to find songs that fitted the theme without being irrelevant, however it just feels like any old sing along video as apart from "Zip a Dee Do Dah", "Following the Leader" and the live action Dalmatians to a lesser extent '101 Dalmatians Pongo and Perdita' doesn't feel very Disney-like. Even the use of "Cruella DeVil" and introductions from Professor Owl and Ludwig Von Drake would have made it feel more like a Disney Sing-Along.
The other eight songs are hampered by canine twists on standards that are not as clever as they'd like to think ("Hokey Puppy", "Pongo) or ridiculous, overblown and over-zany choreography with some sometimes painful hamming up and mugging from the children ("Take Me Out to the Ball Game", "Do Your Ears Hang Low"), while the rest are bland and forgettable with some of the shoutiest and out of tune singing of any of the Disney Sing-Alongs.
Disney's Sing-Along-Songs series often does a great job entertaining, educating and making one nostalgic, but '101 Dalmatians Pongo and Perdita' never really does either. Even the elaborate set design and sometimes spirited staging cannot disguise the children's overacting, very little of the video educates and in the couple of times it tries to it feels preachy and out of place and it's just far too removed from Disney to make one feel nostalgic. Usually the lyrics in the subtitle/sing along captions are easy to follow in the Disney Sing-Along series but not here, with the coming and going too quickly, some out of sync parts and sometimes not showing at all children and adults will struggle making sense of them here, because not everybody will know all the songs.
In conclusion, worth seeing as a Disney completest or as someone who wants to see all of the series, but this was the only one that disappointed me hugely. 4/10 Bethany Cox
