Lady and the Tramp Review

November 9, 2019 at 4:08am
By Jason Stettner

Lady and the Tramp is a Disney+ Original film that is a CGI live action remake of the classic 1955 Disney animated feature. This is definitely a different sort of take on that, while retaining the same general concept. There’s Lady (Tessa Thompson), a loved dog that’s used to regular house living. She ends up running into this Tramp (Justin Theroux) and the two find themselves going on a journey together to explore the city.

This is sort of forced as Lady gets thrown into this situation, and the two just end up going for it. There’s a certain element of romance involved, and perhaps an iconic scene or two that’s recreated here. That aside, the narrative is rather casual in what it presents and this is very straight forward. It wasn’t anything too thrilling, or in-depth and just follows two dogs walking around.

This is a time piece, yet some elements felt a bit out of place with some weird aesthetics being involved with the general world the two animals travel through. There’s some action here, but this is largely just a chatter based experience. There are some attempts at comedy, nothing too wildly funny however. They do have a decent cast, with some songs that are put in yet neither of these two elements are particularly memorable here.

The cast present alright performances, always great to hear Sam Elliot as a tired side character. I felt that the CGI ranged from alright to rather unsettling. It was the smaller dogs that were particularly off-putting at times. I didn’t mind the usage of voice mixed with regular dog movement. At the same time, there’s something strange about it that I just can’t quite find the words to describe.

It worked fine here though, and they made it seem realistic yet still in the realms of fantasy. That sort of style is presented in the regular world they visit as well. It’s hard to really get a sense of the time period this is set in, the world looks similar to what was in Disney’s recent Nutcracker or at least that’s how I felt about it while watching it in action.

The Conclusion

Lady and the Tramp is an alright live action take on this classic, it doesn’t do anything new and just sort of exists quite honestly. I thought this was watchable, but there really wasn’t anything memorable to it. Even the iconic moments didn’t carry much of an impact, they didn’t do much to make this feel like a special journey.

There are some neat segments with the usage of the dogs that aimed for realism, yet at the same time something was just off about it in motion at times. You could really tell some of the CGI parts, and that takes you out of this world. I wish they would have gone further with the story in terms of being more unique. They did some fresh things, but it wasn’t too exciting or charming. The voice over work was fine, it’s a generally ok sort of viewing. It exists, it looks different yet you might be better off just watching the original.

Lady and the Tramp Review at Home with Streamed Viewing
Screening was Provided by Disney

Rating Overall: 5.0