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Walt Disney Pictures has been making rounds these past few years, bringing their animated classics to life with live-action remakes. Today, I’m going to review their latest remake — released last November on Disney+ — Lady and the Tramp.
Nearly every remake faces some sort of pre-release criticism. Even though I don’t remember seeing any negative thoughts towards the announcement of this film, I personally wasn’t looking forward to it as I have been let down by Disney remakes in the past. The trailer didn’t give me any reason not to look forward to this film; I simply didn’t set too high of expectations. Unfortunately, said expectations were not exceeded.
Director Charlie Bean definitely could’ve improved this film, but I also can’t say he did absolutely awful. There are some positive qualities that I found and still remember. There’s just a lot that failed and a few moments that constantly keep slipping my memory.
On a bit of a higher note, I did enjoy the CGI and cinematography! The CGI has some rough edges, but it was pretty convincing, especially in certain scenes. I have no clue if they ever used the real dogs modeled after the characters that appeared in the film, so maybe the most convincing parts are that way because they used the real dogs. Going back to those rough edges: they mostly occurred when the animals spoke, performed larger actions, and that’s just about it.
Other than a couple of songs, the music in this film is kind of forgettable. I remember two musical scenes vividly and neither of them were as good as their original version. The rest of the music didn’t stand out as much as it should have.
Tessa Thompson and Justin Theroux did great with their performances as Lady and Tramp, respectively. I didn’t have much issue with most of the cast playing the animals, despite some minor flaws. However, my biggest issue is with the actors portraying the humans. If they would’ve stuck to the style of the original film, where you rarely if ever, get a glimpse of the humans’ faces, these actors may have been fine. However, they decided to give the humans a lot more screen time, which doesn’t make a whole lot of sense in the first place, and the cast didn’t do the greatest job. I will say Yvette Nicole Brown and Adrian Martinez did especially great with annoying me to no end, which is what the characters call for, so there’s that.
The character development didn’t change much from the original film. What changed the most about it is how well-executed the arcs were and how those arcs made you feel in the end. As you may be able to guess, it’s not as good in the remake. By the time the arcs were completed, I didn’t feel as happy for the characters as I did while watching the original film.
One thing that I am not fond of with this film is the writing as a whole. My first thought is that the changes made in this film are so small, and some are so odd, that I question why they even made those changes. Better yet, why’d they even remake the movie in the first place? By the end of the film, I came to the conclusion that the main motivation was to encourage people to adopt dogs. If you watch the film, you may agree or at least see where I’m coming from (there’s some small changes that enforce that theory). My point is: how this remake turned out makes me think it wasn’t even worth it.
On top of that, the pacing of this film is much worse than that of the original. The original was fluid, got to the point while having fun, and left you with a warm heart. The remake was choppy and it ended up feeling like an underwhelming copy of the original with few minor changes.
Overall, this Lady and the Tramp remake didn’t really work out. The things that turned out decent about this film are the vocal performances and most of the CGI. Everything else pretty much failed, which didn’t completely disappoint me since I set lower expectations.
3.5/10
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