Lady and the Tramp (2019)

The 2019 reimagining of Lady and the Tramp arrived not in theaters but as launch content for a streaming service, which is itself a modest statement about the economics of nostalgia. The plot is unchanged: a cocker spaniel, a schnauzer-mix, a plate of spaghetti, a rat in the nursery. What has changed is the complexion of the humans. The original's white suburban couple has been recast as an interracial marriage, with Kiersey Clemons and Thomas Mann as Darling and Jim Dear, and Yvette Nicole Brown as the cat-fancying Aunt Sarah. The voice cast is broadened in similar fashion. None of this is announced within the film, which is to the production's credit. The diversity sits quietly in the frame and gets on with the business of dogs.

The more instructive revision concerns the Siamese cats. Their original song, a number thick with caricature, has been retired. In its place, two Devon Rex cats named Devon and Rex demolish the living room while a blues tune titled What a Shame plays. The production has been forthright that the change was made to address the number's connotations. That is a genuine act of editorial conscience, and it registers as such. It is also the full extent of the film's social program. The cats are simply cats now. The song is simply a song.

Beyond that, the picture is a romance between two dogs and little else. Lady is female, but the story offers no gender critique; she wants a home and a collar. There is no environmental sermon, no indictment of wealth, no meditation on bodies or minds, no revision of history, and no moment where a character turns to the audience to explain how we ought to live. The film wants only to be charming, and it is charming in the mild, frictionless way of a remake that knows exactly what it is for. We have graded it accordingly, with the sober attention such things demand.