LADY: KC BAILEY/DISNEY.Reviews
FilmProbably the dullest of the live-
action (or quasi-live) remakes of
Disney animated films, Charlie
Bean’s Lady and the Tramp further
reveals the limitations of having
real (or digitally realistic) critters
stand in for the talking animals
of yesteryear. Serving as the
marquee offering of the Disney+
streaming service, it’s nearly
personality-free, suggesting the
studio will save features with real
charm for the big screen.
Kiersey Clemons and Thomas
Mann play Darling and Jim Dear,
a married couple celebrating
Christmas with new cocker
spaniel puppy Lady. Darling gets
pregnant, and Lady (voiced by
Tessa Thompson) feels the cou-
ple’s affections shifting. She ends
up sharing her concerns with
a new dog in the hood, a mutt
named Tramp (Justin Theroux).
Many viewers won’t recog-
nize the name Andrew Bujalski.
But cinephiles will scratch
their heads to see him shar-
ing screenplay credit (with Kari
Granlund): The writer-directorof character-driven comedies like
Support the Girls has left no obvi-
ous mark here, and the few scraps
of wit are delivered flatly.
The movie shows nearly no
sign of life until the half-hour
mark, when two cats arrive in the
Darling household. They wreck
the place, but Lady is blamed. A
nasty house sitter (Yvette Nicole
Brown) tries to muzzle the dog,
but Lady escapes. Tramp comes
to the rescue, and the two bond
while running from a dogcatcher
(Adrian Martinez); then, as the
sun sets, the dogs find themselves
behind an Italian restaurant.
Casting Arturo Castro (Broad
City) and F. Murray Abraham as
the restaurateurs who prepare
a spaghetti feast for the canine
couple, the filmmakers know they
need to do justice to what may be
the only thing adults remember
of the original. This version of the
famous spaghetti-kiss sequenceis not charmless, but it’s a far cry
from the animated version.
That’s due to the difficulty of
giving flesh-and-blood animals
the kind of personalities that
Disney animators spent careers
creating. At their best, these dogs
will skate by on kids’ weakness
for cute animals; at their worst,
they look like they should be
hawking auto insurance in a TV
commercial. The human actors’
voices often don’t seem to be com-
ing from the dogs’ mouths. When
they do, the actor’s personality
and the canine’s face rarely fuse
to create an engaging character.
The story gets a bit more
involving as it goes, though some
elements that might have been
memorable (a musical number
from a dog voiced by Janelle
Monáe) fail to land.Lady and the Tramp
Tessa Thompson and Justin Theroux voice the titular
canines in Disney+’s live-action remake of the classic,
but this version rolls over and plays dead By John DeFore
AIRDATE Tuesday, Nov. 12 (Disney+)
CAST Tessa Thompson, Justin Theroux,
Kiersey Clemons, Thomas Mann
DIRECTOR Charlie Bean
Rated PG, 102 minutesDisney’s pooches-in-love get a live-action
makeover in the streaming service’s debut film.For application information visit
esm.rochester.edu/admissions
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