When I was a kid, Lady
and the Tramp was the only one of the “classic” Disney movies I never saw;
in fact, other than a few of the package films like Make Mine Music or Melody
Time, it was the only Disney movie I never saw. I used to have a babysitter who would look after me at the same time as her grandchildren, who
she’d pamper and spoil, while I got pretty much ignored, making her oddly
similar to a character from this movie, incidentally. I remember one thing very
vividly – she would always put on Lady
and the Tramp for her grandkids to watch, but I was never allowed to watch
with them and I had to sit in the corner with my back turned to the TV and look
at the wall. Perhaps it was this experience, which looking back on it now sounds like something out of
a Roald Dahl book, that turned me against Lady
and the Tramp, because for years I intentionally dismissed and ignored it
and deliberately avoided ever watching it; it was only very recently that I
finally saw it for the very first time. I came to Lady and the Tramp with no childhood memories and few preconceived notions
– I only ever knew about the spaghetti scene and those creepy Siamese cats – and viewed it with
completely new eyes. Is that really so important? Probably not. Would I have
liked it more as a kid? Probably not. Either way, for about ninenteen years of
waiting, Lady and the Tramp delivered
about as best as it could – it’s pretty okay.
Artistically, the film is thankfully a bit of a step up from
the last few films, but not by all that much; though it’s not as colourful or
imaginative as Peter Pan or Alice in Wonderland, the animation quality and attention to detail is generally improved. The character designs are mostly pretty
standard, the human characters look very similar to those from Peter Pan and Cinderella, they are mostly wooden and bland looking, but
fortunately, they are not the focus of the movie. While the animal characters
are hardly fantastically designed either, they at least have some level of
personality and creativity and all stand out from one another; Lady is
probably the best designed of them all, her wide, round eyes and open mouth
relate her sense of naive curiosity and sweet innocence very effectively. She
has a very cute and cuddly design that means you just want to reach in the
screen and pet her, which I imagine is probably what the animators were going
for, so well done there, I guess. The animation on the dogs is pretty good too, Disney
demonstrate once again that they seem to have a better handle on animating
animals than they do humans, at least in these earlier years, though some of
the more cartoony humans such as Tony and Joe, who work at the Italian
restaurant, are well suited to their animation style as well. The animators
studied a lot of different dog breeds in order to get their particular quirks and
nuances down right and it definitely comes across – the dogs all move like real dogs, they have a lot of nice little touches, particularly in the way that they walk, which they got just right; it’s not quite as good as the animal animation in Bambi, but it’s more complex animation
than we’ve seen in a while. The backgrounds are great, they don’t exactly stand
out, but I suppose they aren’t really supposed to, they are more like paintings
that have carefully been constructed for the characters to walk around in. The
shots of the suburban street that Lady lives on, particularly the opening
shots, which take place on Christmas night, are very beautiful and perfectly
capture a sense of early 20th century American suburbia, the attention
to detail is very impressive and it really helps create a strong setting for
the film. Another great shot is of Lady standing on the landing, looking up the
stairs to the baby’s room, as light shines in through the large window; the use
of angles and lighting is fantastic; on the whole, the general art design of this movie is
very nice.
Looking like Kubrick or something
The story is sweet and simple, if not very engaging, the
plot is very basic and lacking in much drama – there is no real villain, except
the rat, who seems to have a weird fixation with killing the baby (Really, what does the rat get out of it, is he just that evil?) and to an extent, Aunt Sarah; Lady is an upper-class dog who is afraid
that her owners’ new baby will take attention away from her, but soon grows
protective of the child, she then meets the lower-class Tramp and they fall in
love. That’s really all there is to it, this is simply another light hearted
comedy, though rather than Alice in
Wonderland which is more over the top and zany or Peter Pan, which tries to add in action and adventure as well, Lady in the Tramp remains grounded and
never goes too wild or farcical. Though to some degree, this is a good
thing, as it means there are no awkward shifts in tone and the movie doesn’t
have to split its running time between comedy and action, it also means that
the film never really takes off or goes anywhere that interesting, it’s just consistently
pleasant. The humour isn’t exactly laugh out loud funny either, it’s just cute,
as is most of the film, but it never becomes too cute or anything, it’s just kind of nice all the way through;
one of the funnier parts of the film is the fact that all the dogs think that
Lady’s owners are called Jim Dear and Darling, because that’s what they always
call one another. That’s what the humour is like, it’s hardly comedy gold, it’s
just cute little stuff that’ll make you smile; this might not be much, but I
don’t think the film was really going for much more, so I suppose in that regard
it does its job pretty well.
The World’s Greatest Criminal Mind
There are quite a lot of characters in Lady and the Tramp, though they mostly only get a couple of scenes
each, they aren’t really characters so much as character designs, vehicles to
show off how differently Disney can animate each different type of animal,
most prominently, different breeds of dog. It’s a nice idea, but it gets old
pretty fast, in one scene Lady is taken to the pound pretty much solely so we
can see a bunch of different dog breeds say about two lines each, many of which
are given stereotypes to match their origin, such as a Chihuahua who speaks in
an over the top Mexican accent and sleeps a lot. Yeah. Similarly, there’s a
scene where Lady and Tramp go to a zoo and meet a bunch of different animals,
including a beaver who seems to be the origin for Gopher from The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, then of course there’s
the famous scene with the Siamese cats, there’s just a lot of scenes where Lady
meets different animals for Disney to animate, you get the idea. The human
characters aren’t given much time either, Jim Dear and Darling are just nice
and that’s about it, though admittedly, they are supposed to be distant
figures, removed from Lady and the other animals, so this works pretty well.
Probably the most lively of any of the characters is Aunt Sarah, whose extreme
personality is kind of jarringly at odds with the rest of the film’s down to
earth and relaxed nature; she’s really annoying, but she’s supposed to be, so I
guess she works pretty well, for what she is.
The most prominent of the side characters are Jock and Trusty,
Lady’s neighbours and sidekicks who are also pretty generic clichés – Jock is a
Scottish Terrier who speaks in a strong Scottish accent and has a bit of a
temper and Trusty is a slow talking, dim-witted bloodhound who rambles on a
lot; there’s nothing especially annoying about them, but they’re a bit of a
bore. Lady herself is alright, once again she’s another nice but boring and
relatively passive protagonist, but it works better here because she’s a
pampered pet so it fits that she’s kind of naive about the world; still, the
archetype is wearing a little thin. Lady does have a degree of charm to her
though, helped by her aforementioned cute and cuddly design and her voice,
provided Barbara Luddy, which is enjoyably breathy and husky and helps add a lot to
her character. Tramp is probably the best of the characters, he’s a classically
loveable scoundrel, a bit of a trickster and a joker, but he’s got a good
heart; it’s nothing we haven’t seen before, but it’s done well enough that he
comes off as likeable and fun rather than generic or annoying. The romance
between the two isn’t exactly well developed or powerful, but it’s at least
given more time to grow than previous ones, such as Cinderella and Prince
Charming or Snow White and her nameless Prince, who both share about two scenes
and seem to fall in love over a few minutes. Lady and Tramp at least spend a
decent amount of time together, get to know each other and we see the sowing of the seeds of their relationship, before it blossoms; it’s not a fantastic love story and, surprisingly, it’s
not even really the focus of the film, but it’s sweet enough and it's refreshing to see Disney do a love story that is a little more downplayed.
Lady and the Tramp and the Spaghetti and the Meatballs
There aren’t that many songs and they’re a little
disappointing, though they are more like actual musical numbers than those in Peter Pan or Alice in Wonderland, they are still pretty short and don’t really
take centre stage, they’re more like short breathers the movie takes before
getting back to the “action”. “Bella Notte” is rather nice and its use in the
movie’s most famous scene, where Lady and Tramp have dinner, is good; it’s a
sweet song, though not an inventive one. Disney also continues its tradition of
progressively more racially insensitive songs with “We Are Siamese”, featuring
Siamese cats that act like Asian caricatures, with big buck teeth, broken
English and accents close to Mickey Rooney in Breakfast at Tiffany’s level. They’re definitely pretty rough
stereotypes, but the song is still very memorable and enjoyable with some nice
lyrics, though unfortunately it doesn’t really last as a song for very long and
the cats quickly start just speaking the lines, rather than singing them, which
is a bit of a bummer. Still, while it lasts, “We Are Siamese” is a good, if
slightly offensive number – any song that manages to rhyme something with ‘domicile’
is okay by me. The other songs are pretty forgettable, except for “He’s a Tramp”,
though I personally don’t really care for it, if only because it strikes me as
just an excuse for Peggy Lee to do a number, as she voices the dog who sings it
who is also called Peg. If it was a great song it might not bother me and to a
degree it has a nice, jazzy tune, but I dunno I just don’t really like it,
something about that Peggy Lee dog singing it like she’s a lounge singer or
something just rubs me the wrong way.
After years of build-up, constantly hearing about it being
one of the classic Disney movies and seeing a few of its more famous scenes
over and over, Lady and the Tramp was
never going to meet my expectations, but that isn’t the movie’s fault. As it
is, Lady and the Tramp is a perfectly
fine movie; the animals are cute, the love story is basic, but sweet, the
animation is good and it never gets too in your face. It’s a very warm comedy,
seemingly designed not to make you laugh so much as make you smile and it
definitely achieves that, I find it hard to believe that anyone could hate or
especially dislike this movie, it’s just too darn pleasant. While unfortunately,
this desire to please means that Lady and
the Tramp never takes any risks and so, never becomes all that interesting
or unique, it also prevents itself from ever taking any nasty missteps. Lady and the Tramp seems to have been
made with the almost deliberate intention of just being “pretty good” and while
something can be said about the dangers of setting low goals for oneself, it
paid off here; Lady and the Tramp isn’t
a knockout, but it’s pretty good.
Other Thoughts
- This is like the saddest thing ever
That dog is SAD
- Seriously look at these guys
We are weird ethnic stereotypes, if you please
5.5/10
Next Week: Sleeping Beauty!
Email: joetalksaboutstuff@gmail.com
Twitter: @JSChilds
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