HOW do you follow a cracking story? With another one? No, if a story is that good it can easily stand telling again.

102 Dalmatians makes no, ahem, bones about retreading the steps of the original story. Having got the (relatively) faithful version out of the way, the film makers can settle down and mould the story to suit their ends.

After three years of Pavlovian treatment, Cruella De Vil (Glenn Close) emerges from prison a changed woman. She uses her vast fortune to rescue the Second Chance dogs home for abandoned pooches which is run by a dog lover called Kevin (Ioan Grufford); and is placed under the watchful eye of her probation officer, a Dalmatian devotee called Chloe (Alice Evans).

But it takes more than electric shock treatment to make our Cruella change her spots and it's not long before she has hatched another fur-ocious plot to skin a shed-load of Dalmatians for the ultimate coat - she needs 102 this time though as she wants a hood!

Employing the services of famed French furrier, Jean Pierre Le Pelt (Gerard Depardieu) she rounds up the dogs and sends them to face their fate in France.

And she would have got away with it were it not for those meddling hounds. All the dogs in the land spread the news by the power of bark - and luckily one of Second Chance's guests is a scene-stealing parrot called Waddlesworth (voiced by Eric Idle) who thinks he is a dog and is only too happy to translate the puppy-speak for Kevin and Chloe.

Obviously, all turns out well and Cruella is caged again before her evil plan can be unleashed.

As unpretentious children's entertainment goes, this is absolutely fine. There is no message for grown-ups, no attempt to remind adults how great their childhood was and no environmental subtext for the tinies to soak up.

What there is consists of daft gags, famous actors mugging their way through slapstick schtick and bags of fun.

And there's nothing wrong with that.