Saturday, January 3, 2015

Lady and the Tramp

Lady and the Tramp; animated comedy, USA, 1955; D: Clyde Geronimi, Wilfred Jackson, Hamilton Luske, S: Barbara Luddy, Larry Roberts, Bill Thompson

During winter, a husband gives a present to his wife: a cocker spaniel puppy called Lady. She grows up into a faithful dog and all is well for some time, until the husband and wife have a baby, which denotes Lady to a second place. When the couple leaves for a vacation and the baby in the house is guarded by aunt Sarah, she puts a muzzle on Lady. This causes Lady to run away and encounter stray dog Tramp, who helps her lose the muzzle. He shows her where to find food and enjoys the free life. The two fall in love. When the Tramp helps save the baby from a rat that entered its room through the window, the couple decides to adopt it to let him live with Lady.

The 15th animated film from the Walt Disney studios, "Lady and the Tramp" is one of the studios lesser, weaker achievements, but it still has enough charm to "survive" the test of time. After reviewing the film, one quickly realizes that it only has two things goes for it - the beautiful, crispy-clear classic animation and a great romantic moment when the Tramp and Lady eat the same spaghetti pasta string and thus inevitably kiss in the middle of it - but overall it did not manage to make a lot out of the thin, one-note storyline and offer a more versatile stratification of events that will dazzle. The majority of the film relies too much on silly jokes and childish ideas, whereas it presents the life of a stray dog almost as some sort of a holiday, where there is always enough food and no hunger or cold in winter in sight, whereas the only more realistic counterbalance to such a simplified view is the sequence in the dog pound. Several forced plot ploys bother as well, the most obvious being the "evil" rat entering precisely the room of the baby, in order to eulogize the Tramp. Still, due to its refreshingly classical narrative and good natured mood, as well as a few good jokes here and there, "Lady and the Tramp" is still a good edition of a 'dog's life'.

Grade;++

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