Lady and the Tramp is a live-action adaptation of Lady and the Tramp, directed by Charlie Bean and written by Andrew Bujalski and Kari Granlund. It was released on November 12, 2019 on Disney+ upon the platform's launch. It is the first of the Disney Live-Action Remakes to be released digitally instead of theatrically.
Lady (voiced by Tessa Thompson) is a pampered pet Cocker Spaniel who lives with her owners. One day, she meets a stray called the Tramp (voiced by Justin Theroux) and joins him on an adventure.
The film also stars Kiersey Clemons as Darling, Thomas Mann as Jim Dear, Janelle Monáe as the voice of Peg, F. Murray Abraham as Tony, Yvette Nicole Brown as Aunt Sarah, Adrian Martinez as Elliot, Ken Jeong as a doctor and Sam Elliott as the voice of Trusty.
Unlike the theatrical remakes, the film uses real animals with minimal CGI. Several of the dog actors featured in the film are shelter dogs.
Lady and the Tramp provides examples of:
- Adaptational Job Change: While Jim Dear's occupation is never really stated in the original, it’s presumed he has some sort of office job. In this version, it's stated he is a musician.
- Adapted Out:
- Since Lady and Tramp don’t visit a zoo, they don’t meet with a real beaver. However, they use the statue of a beaver to remove Lady's muzzle.
- The original animated film has Lady chased by three alley dogs after she gets muzzled. In this live-action adaptation, the amount of alley dogs that attack Lady is reduced to one.
- Lady and Tramp's puppies, which they have at the end of the original animated film (although two Canon Foreigner puppies do end up becoming their neighbors after Jock's owner adopts them having been inspired by Jim Dear and Darling adopting the Tramp)note .
- The Borzoi, dachshund and Chihuahua from the pound.
- The pound dogs mentioning that Tramp had several girlfriends before Lady.
- Adaptational Expansion: Tramp's backstory detailing his original owner and how he became a stray gets elaborated on.
- Adaptational Karma: Unlike the original, in this version Jim and Darling discover Aunt Sarah's abusive treatment of Lady when they have to pick the latter up from the pound. They furiously call her out on doing so, and when she refuses any blame for the fiasco, Jim promptly kicks her out of the house and out of their lives.
- Adaptational Relationship Overhaul: In this movie, Peg and Bull are actually a couple. In the original movie, they were just close friends.
- Adaptational Species Change:
- Peg is played by a Pekingese. In the original, she's a vaguely Peke-looking mutt.
- The cats that frame Lady, Devon and Rex, are now Devon Rexes instead of Siamese.
- Adaptational Wimp: Though Trusty does aid Lady in locating Tramp and Elliot in the climax he ultimately can't catch up to the carriage and doesn't suffer a Disney Death. It's Lady who stops the carriage and saves Tramp.
- Adaptational Villainy: Downplayed. In this version, Elliot is hell-bent on capturing Tramp and strays out of normal procedures, such as barging in on the Darlings to do so. However, when they adopt him at the end, he drops the issue without argument.
- Adaptation Dye-Job:
- The Tramp isn't pale grey anymore. He's now more of a greyish-black and off-white instead.
- Lady's ears are red like the rest of her body instead of reddish brown.
- The bulldog is white with brown spots instead of being completely tan.
- The horses pulling the dog pound wagon are chestnut rather than gray.
- Babies Ever After: Subverted. Lady and Tramp don't have their puppies at the end of the movie. But Jock's owner adopts the puppies that made a couple of appearances earlier in the film. This is justified as Lady and Tramp's puppies would have rendered the movie's message about pet adoption a bit of a
Broken Aesop. - Babies Make Everything Better: As Lady finds out, Lulu hasn't taken her place, if anything she finds out Lulu makes her even happier than when it was just her, Darling and Jim Dear, and fills the house and their family with even more love.
- Bad "Bad Acting": Lady acting like she has rabies to scare off a menacing stray. It still works.
- Big "NO!": Elliot panics when Lady steps in front of his carriage and causes him to crash.
- Bloodless Carnage: Averted. There is a small pool of blood near the dead rat’s corpse when Lady shows it to Jim Dear and Darling. Tramp also has a few fresh cuts on him after the fight.
- Culturally Sensitive Adaptation: In the animated film, the two cat villains are Siamese cats who speak in a stereotypical Asian way. The live-action film changes the cats' breed and voices.
- The Russian Borzoi, German dachshund and Mexican Chihuahua from the pound have all been removed, though the English bulldog remains.
- Determinator: Elliot is highly bent on capturing Tramp out of all dogs. He’ll stop at nothing to impound Tramp.Tramp: Oh my gosh! This guy's obsessed with me.
- Disney Death: As Lady frightens the horses pulling the dog pound wagon and causes the wagon to tip over, Tramp falls out of the wagon and is rendered unconscious. Lady mourns him until he finally awakens.
- Easily Forgiven: Unlike in the original, Lady holds no hard feelings toward Tramp for her getting captured instead of him and their breakup is more amicable and due to them coming from two different worlds that neither is ready to leave.
- Gender Flip:
- Jock the male Scottish terrier is female in this film (short for "Jacqueline").
- In the animated telling, the Baby which Darling and Jim Dear have is a boy named Jim Jr. For the remake, the baby is a girl called Lulu.
- Si and Am were girls in the original, here they are boys and have been named Devon and Rex.
- Happily Married: Jim Dear and Darling.
- Heroic Sacrifice: A variant. With Elliot being a more prominent antagonist and being in Lady’s home when the rat gets into the baby’s room, Tramp is very much aware he could be caught. But he goes after the rat anyway.
- Live-Action Adaptation: The film is an adaptation of the 1955 animated film Lady and the Tramp.
- Hollywood Tone-Deaf: Aunt Sarah tries singing along to an opera song playing on a record player. Emphasis on tries .
- Logo Joke: The Disney logo plays a jazzy version of "When You Wish Upon a Star", and the logo turns sepia-toned at the end.
- My God, What Have I Done?: The Tramp's insistence on splitting up when Elliot chases after him and Lady gets Tramp cornered in the train yard, and then gets Lady sent to the pound when she goes back to help him.
- Named by the Adaptation: The dogcatcher, who is unnamed in the 1955 film, is named Elliot in this film.
- Never My Fault: After the Dears recover Lady from the pound, Aunt Sarah has the nerve to blame her for the whole fiasco, even though it was Sarah's forcefulness (not to mention the clearly unnecessary muzzle) that drove Lady away in the first place. In response, a disgusted Jim promptly kicks Sarah out and slams the door in her face.
- Never Say "Die": The dog in the pound who’s taken to the "one-way room".
- The Oner: Lady's race through the street after being muzzled.
- Politically Correct History: An interracial marriage in America more than half a century before Loving v. Virginia? Sure, why not? It's Disney.
- Race Lift: In the original movie, the entire human cast was white. In this one, most are black/Asian.
- In the original film, Darling was white. Here, she's played by the biracial Kiersey Clemons. By extension, the baby is also multiracial.
- Aunt Sarah is portrayed by Yvette Nicole Brown.
- An animal variation with Aunt Sarah's cats, who are of a different breed in this movie, and are no longer Asian-coded. They are also voiced by two African-American actors.
- Selective Enforcement: Elliot is dead set on catching Tramp and any stray dog, but when Jim Dear asks him if he could look into the problems they and the neighborhood have been having with the rat, he nervously replies that he "doesn't associate [himself] with vermin. They carry disease."
- Tempting Fate: When Lady escapes the pet store after having a muzzle put on, she accidentally causes a bunch of birds to get loose. A woman then walks in, asking if they sell birds; cue the loose birds swarming about her.
- Tranquil Fury: Jim Dear and Darling are surprisingly calm and still cheerful when they call out Aunt Sarah for her cruel treatment of Lady and kick her out of the house and their lives.
- Villainous Breakdown: A much more subdued case with Elliot breathing heavily as he walks away after being thwarted out of taking Tramp to the pound, almost sounding like he wants to hyperventilate.
