With Disney+ launching in the US in 2019, they needed a film to showcase it, what better than… Lady and the Tramp?
Lady and the Tramp is the 4th Disney remake of 2019 but because it’s on a streaming service it was made on a much lower budget, it had $60m to its name, less than ¼ of that of The Lion King. That in and of itself isn’t necessarily a problem, but does have its drawbacks as we’ll get to.
The original falls into the same category in that it was made with a reasonably low animation budget, which shows in the finished product and has a few minor problematic moments. It was ripe for a remake, though I do understand why it was relegated to a streaming service, it’s not the most epic of films, it’s a fairly simple love story. There’s nothing wrong with that per-say, but I feel it’s not a story that needed an extra 30 minutes added on.
The film got a mixed reception, by this point par for the course, but we have little insight into viewing figures due to the nature of streaming.
The story of Lady and the Tramp is a cute story, but it isn’t one of my favourites.
In terms of plot the remake follows most of the major plot beats from the original. Lady is a pampered pooch until a baby takes away some attention ‘owed’ to her, The Tramp is a smart-talking street dog who’s cynical of humans after his own experiences. They bond together in one of the best kiss-scenes in fiction, and their duelling perspective on the world lead them to clash and bond with each other.
The changes are relatively minor, but some elements are expanded. The Dog catcher is now a major antagonist of the film, obsessively chasing after The Tramp in particular. This is dumb, and the performance is exceptionally camp and silly. Across the movie, the rest of the performances are solid.
The biggest time-filler they have is having more scenes of the two lovers exploring the city together before dining out at the Italian place run by imbeciles. (You know cooked meat and pasta aren’t good for dogs, right?) I get hoping to further add chemistry between the two but it’s ultimately kinda boring.
When it comes to addressing the minor bit of racism in the original with the Siamese cats, they actually take the bare minimum of steps in actually having the Siamese cats show up again, but no longer having stereotypical Chinese accents and singing a completely rewritten song. They could’ve had an Asian-American voice actor play them but it’s a step in the right direction.
It does annoy me that the cats never actually face consequences for messing up the house and whatnot but they always were more a plot-device as opposed to a full-on antagonist.
Minor change, but Jock is now short for Jacqueline, no real complaints here, I liked the voice. Other minor changes, the owners no longer leave the baby to go on a holiday. They take the baby with them to see a relative, now this does leave an issue as to why they’d ask a relative who clearly hates dogs and owns two cats to dogsit, and not, I dunno, one of the neighbours?
I guess they also tried to strengthen Lady’s arc, by showing the family paying less attention to her in a much bigger way than they did in the animated film. Again, this feels more like they’re trying to fill more time.
The Lady and the Tramp remake is more-or-less as good as the original, barring some cheap-looking CGI work. They do make some changes, addressing a couple of more problematic elements but most succeed only in making the movie longer as opposed to adding real depth. Top of that list is the expanded role for the dog-catcher who is some slapstick away from being a Looney Tunes villain.
Rating 55/100
And we’ve reached the conclusion
of the Disney Remake Marathon, as of when I’ve written this, the Mulan remake
is next and is due to be released as an additional purchase on Disney plus,
whether this works out for Disney or not remains to be seen
No comments:
Post a Comment