Directed by: Hamilton Luske, Clyde Geronimi, Wilfred Jackson
Written by: Erdman Penner, Joe Rinaldi, Ralph Wright, Don DaGradi
Starring: Peggy Lee, Barbara Luddy, Larry Roberts, Bill Thompson
Rating: [3/5]
While dogs are generally revered in our country, there’s still a chasm in the type of lives they live, wholly dependent on their owners. Some dogs live in a basement or confined to a cage for most of the day, while others sleep on their owner’s bed and even have homemade food prepared for them. This disparity exists and displays the difference between the two dogs in Lady and the Tramp, where two dogs find each other through happenstance and find something special between them.
Gifted to an affluent family as a puppy, Lady (Barbara Luddy) lives a luxurious life as a dog with all of the amenities and affection from her owners. One day she meets a stray dog, Tramp (Larry Roberts), who warns her not to get too comfortable around humans, as their affections can easily shift from her to something else, like a baby. With her owners pregnant and bringing a new baby into the household, it presents Lady with a challenge she never thought she would encounter.
Still one of the more endearing classic animated films in the Disney collection, Lady and the Tramp sets its focus on the lives of dogs across the spectrum. Lady navigates different dynamics, spanning from her life of luxury of what her owners provide to the harshness of the world outside of her home with other dogs, and then when the babysitter arrives and brings her Siamese cats. In each setting the expectations change, as do the perceptions those around her have of her. In the eyes of her owners, they see her as a precious member of their family, while the babysitter sees her as a nuisance who needs no excuse to banish her to the doghouse. That alone brings enough intrigue to the film, but the main draw will forever be the love story she builds with Tramp.
Coming from essentially two different worlds, the meeting of Lady and Tramp occurs through chance, and while the latter seeks to show the former the reality of the world, they build something beautiful together. This leads to the most famous scene of this movie where they share a plate of spaghetti and end up sharing the same noodle. A cute scene but also in a way indicative of the way humans love dogs. They receive this free meal from a restaurant owner who likes to feed Tramp and presents this dinner for them to enjoy while Lady is out of the house. Their romance continues to have staying power.
The elephant in the room is the Siamese cats. This can delve down into age-old conversations of elements of films that, through the modern lens, do not hold, but these cats are certainly something else. It’s one thing to paint them as villains as cats usually are within films centered on dogs, but the way their racial makeup presents them makes it a bit difficult to watch. Certainly something we can all acknowledge as wrong, but at the very least it does not encompass so much of the film that it deters us from the enjoyment one could have.
With this story happening through the perspective of these animals, it does create some different stakes for them. This shows itself at its apex when the climax of the film occurs in stopping a singular rat from entering the house and harming the newborn baby being watched by the babysitter. The amount of fervor and concern that a singular rat causes that makes Tramp come in for the rescue truly works because of what these dogs perceive of the situation. This echoes in the way the film presents the humans, where we never see their faces but just parts of them down at the eye-level of the dogs. This film has so much intentionality, and it simply works.
Short and sweet, The Lady and the Tramp holds up to this day with its lovely hand-drawn animation and fun characters to follow. While the film mostly focuses on the titular characters, we also get a sprinkling of other stray dogs who enter the story and bring their own flavor. It continues to work as a cute little romantic comedy between these two dogs as the story presents everything through the eyes of these canines and everything that comes with being adored by many while also being seen as a pest by a minority.
