Lady and the Tramp probably isn't the reason you're going to sign up for Disney+. But it feels, in some ways, like the essence of Disney+'s appeal: It's technically new, but built on a bedrock of nostalgia, all for the purpose of serving up two totally unobjectionable hours of wholesome all-ages entertainment.
Whether that's a good thing or a bad thing depends, I suppose, on what you wanted out of this movie — or, for that matter, out of this streaming service.
The new film, directed by Charlie Bean (of the perfectly fine Lego Ninjago Movie), follows in the recent but already prolific tradition of remaking animated Disney classics in live-action. Actual live-action, in this case, not simply realistic-looking animation a la The Jungle Book or The Lion King.
The dogs are played by real dogs, with CG magic animating their eyes or twisting their ill-suited mouths around ill-suited language. It's unsettling at first and it never becomes completely convincing. But humans have an extraordinary ability to acclimate to even the strangest situations, so you may eventually settle, as I did, into not minding it too much.
Other updates include greater racial diversity, to the point of anachronism, and significantly less racism. (There are still two asshole cats, but they're no longer Siamese, and they sing a different tune.) The gender dynamics have been tweaked, too: Lady is a more active participant in her own story, and the Tramp less of a womanizer, and other female roles have been beefed up, like Yvette Nicole Brown's Aunt Sarah, or adapted from male ones, like Ashley Jensen's Jock. And it all runs about half an hour longer than the original did, because of course it does.
Justin Theroux voices the Tramp.
Image: Disney
For all these changes, Lady and the Tramp does not significantly reshape our understanding of this story or these characters or their world, and it's not really trying to. Rather, the end goal here seems simply to update a classic for more contemporary tastes. In that sense, it's not so different from other recent Disney remakes like Beauty and the Beast or Aladdin or The Lion King.
Those animated movies felt fresher in our memories, however, and the attempts to modernize them ham-fisted. Lady and the Tramp, in contrast, seemed more due for a makeover. The experience of watching the original Lady and the Tramp in 2019 feels different than it must have in 1955 (or 1975 or 1995), when it would have been considered more acceptable to have Lady pursued endlessly by male suitors, or to have the Siamese cats speak in broken, accented English.
Opinions can and will vary on what's lost or gained by redoing the story in a more contemporary style (I, for one, strongly prefer the elegant hand-drawn imagery of the older version), but it's easy to understand why Disney and its customers might have wanted a version of the story that doesn't require turning a blind eye to its uncomfortable flaws. And should you want to revisit the earlier one, it'll be available on Disney+ right there alongside the re-do.
Tessa Thompson voices Lady.
Image: Disney
What the 2019 version does retain of the classic is its aww-worthy charm. It turns out it's still pretty entertaining to watch cute dogs fall in love — sometimes more, even, since the "realism" heightens the absurdity of a restaurant worker and his employee stepping away from the dinner rush to stage an elaborate dinner date for two random street dogs.
What the 2019 version does retain of the classic is its aww-worthy charm.
Tessa Thompson never quite seems comfortable as Lady, or perhaps that's simply because the character design skews more cartoonish. But Justin Theroux is utterly winning as an amused and jaded soul, and the two of them have more chemistry than some fully human couples I've seen in recent romantic comedies. By the time they're yukking it up over an impromptu riverboat ride, it's hard not to root for the spaghetti-smeared kiss we know is coming.
Or the redemptive arc, or the grand romantic gesture, or the happy ending. There's nothing about Lady and the Tramp that is unexpected, and not just because it's a remake. But that's part of the film's draw, too. Sometimes, you don't want to be surprised or challenged. Sometimes, you want something easy and comfortable that you know will be good enough, even if it's not great. Sometimes, you want something exactly like Lady and the Tramp on Disney+.
