Lady and the Tramp Review: Disney Marathon

Spoilers

Dogs are pretty great aren’t they! It doesn’t matter how sad you are your dog will always be there to cheer you up. Do I like dogs more than humans? Perhaps. In a video game will I happily mow-down thousands of people but hesitate when I have to kill a virtual dog? Yes. Do I get more pissed off when a dog dies in a movie than when a human does? Also, yes. Is that why I like Lady and the Tramp so much? Yeah probably, but I swear it’s a good film as well.

This is one of the Disney movies that I had watched a ton before starting this marathon. Most of my Disney favourites came from the 90s or 2010s but Lady and the Tramp is one of the exceptions. So, let’s stop dilly-dallying and talk about that plot.

We are introduced to husband and wife Jim Dear and Darling (yeah, that’s their real names). Jim gifts his wife a cocker spaniel puppy who they call Lady. Lady is spoiled and loved by the family and quickly becomes friends with two other dogs from the neighbourhood, Trusty and Jock. Lady notices a rat who is weirdly the antagonist of the movie (wouldn’t quite make my top ten villains of all-time list). Lady barks at the rat and it pisses off till the final act where it’ll get its time to shine.

Elsewhere in town we meet a dog named Tramp. He is happy with his life as a stray and is a strong independent dog who don’t need no man. He scrounges for some food and rescues some strays from a dog catcher. He seems pretty chill.

Back to Lady. She has started to notice Jim and Darling ignoring her. It turns out that Darling is pregnant. Lady goes out to vent to her two friends Trusty and Jock before Tramp comes waltzing in. He states that her owners will quickly forget about her once the baby comes, clearly talking from past experiences. Tramp gets ordered to leave because he spoke the truth.

Eventually the baby is born and Lady is further ignored. They sing the song “La La Lu” to their baby and look it’s a song clearly meant for an actual baby, of course I’m not going to like it, but it works in the scene. After a while Lady’s owners stop being assholes and she is no longer ignored and when she is looking at the baby the song “What Is a Baby” plays. I completely forgot about this song, it sure does exist, I guess.

Jim and Darling decides to go on a trip together, leaving Lady and the baby with Aunt Sarah and her two Siamese cats who sing the song called “The Siamese Cat Song”. It’s shit to be honest, why do the characters who we spend five minutes with get their own song? Oh, and these two cats are Asian stereotypes.

The two Siamese cats destroy the house and of course Lady is blamed so Aunt Sarah goes to get Lady a muzzle. Lady escapes and is now in the cruel world, far from the safety of her house.

Lady gets chased down by some stray dogs before Tramp comes to the rescue. Lady still has the problem of the nuzzle to deal with though. Tramp acts like a salesman to trick a beaver into removing the nuzzle from Lady stating that he can keep it if he gets it off Lady. I love how Lady joins in on Tramps act here, it shows how he’s starting to have an influence on her.

Tramp decides to show Lady how great being a stray can be and takes her around town before they have spaghetti in the most iconic scene of the film. You don’t even need to have seen the film to know what scene I’m talking about; it’s been references and parodied by almost everything at this point. It’s good that the scene still holds up. It starts with them being friends and ends with them being romantically involved in an organic and charming way. Throughout, the song “Bella Notte” plays and does it fit into the category of bullshit Disney romance songs that don’t say much? Yes. But the scene is so good that I barely noticed.

Tramp and Lady wake up next to each other (probably where the puppies from later come from) and on his way to take her home Tramp gets distracted by chickens. He insists that they both chase them and I do find Lady’s reaction pretty funny; she’d rather be doing anything else. This leads to them getting shot at (worst date ever) and it ends with Lady getting caught by the dogcatcher and taken to the pound.

The pound scene is great, we find out that Tramp has had numerous girlfriends in the past, and the fact that he doesn’t even try to rescue Lady paints him in a pretty bad light. We get a dog being taken to their death in an effective scene which really shows us what could happen if Lady doesn’t get out of there. I love the song ‘He’s a Tramp’. I wish the film had more jazz in it to be honest. It’s catchy and actually serves the plot, it tells us about Tramps past but more importantly tells Lady about it, making her further doubt his intentions with her. Its beautifully sung by Peggy Lee and is one of my favourite Disney songs. Lady gets taken home from the pound by Aunt Sarah where she is punished by being chained to her doghouse.

I much prefer how they deal with the dogcatchers in this film in comparison to the shitty remake. It’s much more realistic in the original than ironically the “realistic” remake. The dogcatchers aren’t presented as evil here (although I’d never really want to hang out with one) but instead simply doing their job. In the remake the dog catcher is presented as some deluded maniac who just fucking hates dogs.

Anyway, Tramp turns up to apologise to Lady but his actions spoke louder than his words so she tells him to piss off (you go girl). The rat breaks into the house and I know it can’t be great but could a rat really murder a baby? I’m genuinely curious, I couldn’t find much about it online. Yeah it could be unhygienic for the baby but it’s played as a do-or-die situation. Lady calls for Tramp who goes to kill the rat. This scene is actually really cool I don’t know how they made a fight between a dog and a rat the coolest fight scene in any Disney movie to this point. The dark exaggerated colours alongside the lightning occasionally showing us the full scene is perfect. Lady escapes and helps Tramp but they both get caught by Aunt Sarah after they kill the rat. She believes that they are attacking the baby so Lady is locked in the cellar and Tramp is given to the dogcatcher.

Jim and Darling return and release Lady, not believing she would attack their baby. Lady, Jock and Trusty chase down the dogcatcher and once the rat is found Jim and Darling realise that Tramp is innocent so adopt him. Tramp has now proven that he truly cares for Lady by risking his own life to help her. Turns out he was a good boy this whole time.

Flash forward a few years and Lady and Tramp have a bunch of puppies together and they all live happily ever after.

I love Lady and the Tramp, yeah, the romance plot isn’t exactly complex but it’s cute and believable. The dogs are animated so well that they feel more like dogs than the actual dogs they used in the shitty remake. It looks amazing and only has minimal racism. It has problems of course, the entire getting replaced by a baby storyline is forgotten ten minutes into the film. It really should have been something that caused Lady to debate whether she should go home or not. But other than that, I can’t think of anymore major flaws. Next up we have Sleeping Beauty.

8 / 10