BEFORE: I'm still working my way through the (so-called) "live-action" remakes of Disney's classic animated films. (I've got just "Dumbo" and "The Lion King" left, and then "Mulan" if it ever gets released...) Only they're not "live-action", not fully, because they have CGI animals and other stuff in them. "Live-action" is really only a term used by animators when discussing movies that aren't animated - but the Disney "live-action" films are all at least partly animated, so please, Disney, find another name. I guess "non-animated" is too on the nose, plus it sounds like it has a bit of a negative connotation. But come on guys, are we just supposed to ignore the parts that were clearly animated?
Even if those dogs are real (and I'm not saying they are, not yet anyway) the techniques of making a dog appear to "talk" via animated mouths is used here, so THAT'S ANIMATION! Or at least needs to be considered a "visual effect", so it sells all other live-action films short as a collective genre. I guess if they can use technology to make dogs appear to talk in commercials for flea and tick medicine, they can do the same in the updated version of this Disney classic film.
(The voice of) Clancy Brown carries over from "Supercon".
THE PLOT: The romantic tale of a sheltered uptown Cocker Spaniel dog and a streetwise downtown mutt.
AFTER: Look, I wish Disney Corp. the very best, I really do. And I say this as a stockholder, not just a fan of many of their properties. I would have visited Epcot or maybe even "Galaxy's Edge" this May if the pandemic hadn't made travel impossible - maybe next year. But I don't really understand the need to strip-mine their own library for old properties that can be renovated for the next generation. I guess they worked their way through all of Western literature, from Brothers Grimm to Victor Hugo to Edgar Rice Burroughs, and they reached the end and decided to start back at the beginning. Can the "live-action" Snow White be far behind, or can we not use the derogatory term "dwarves" any more?
Yep, I'm going to focus on diversity issues today, because I don't see the need to use "Lady and the Tramp" to rewrite history, to depict the United States of the 1920's (or is it 1930's?) as racially diverse, especially in a Southern (??, again, not sure) town, when we all know IT WAS NOT THAT WAY! It's great to want to depict diversity, and it's great to hire a racially diverse cast to do that, but you can't change our history. (In the same way that pulling down statues of slave-owners doesn't change what happened back then, even if it makes us feel better now.) You can depict an alternate history in a movie, but that doesn't change the past. But I guess it makes some people feel better to pretend that back then there were opportunities for, say, people of Asian descent to practice medicine, or for a mixed-race couple to get married and live in a home together without the rest of the community freaking out. It was a different time, people were just not as accepting of racial diversity, and suggesting otherwise seems not only pointless, but overly, even wrongfully, nostalgic. Nostalgia for a time that never really existed is not really nostalgia.
I think it would be great if people back then had been more accepting, only they weren't, and we have to deal with that fact, agree and admit that racism happened in the past, in order to help prevent it in the future. If we allow our children to think that middle America was racially diverse back in the 1920's, what kind of message does that send? By suggesting that racism was defeated back then, it's almost a sign that we can relax now, let our guard down because this is a problem that's already been solved, and that's just not where we are as a country. We're still divided on topics like this, and we have been for decades, change doesn't come easily or quickly, and movies that suggest that the past was all sunshine and rainbows seem very misguided.
And it's not really race-blind casting if it feels like a production company went out of its way to be more diverse. I agree that racial diversity is great, but it's got to come naturally - if it feels forced then it's quite obvious that somebody's trying to - not whitewash, but whatever the opposite of whitewash is - the past. Color-wash? I hate to connect the casting here to some kind of affirmative action, but damn it, that's what it feels like. The P.C. police are apparently not going to rest until they remake every film from my childhood and make sure they're all racially diversified and gender-neutral, right? What's going to happen in another 40 years, assuming that the world becomes more liberal and accepting overall, will Disney go back and re-make "Lady and the Tramp" again, with an entire transgender cast? They'd have to remove "Lady" from the title, because maybe the dog was born female but identifies as a male, what then?
(I bring this up, of course, just as the filmed version of the original cast production of "Hamilton" is also hitting Disney Plus - and this is another example of what I'm talking about. I understand casting the parts of Washington, Jefferson and others with actors of color, and in a way it makes a point simply because it stands out and seems shocking, but it's also stunt casting in a way. And since it was intentional, that's not really "race-blind" casting, it's intentionally casting a minority to make up for some grievances of the past, but as stated above, it also sends a weird message to the kids, a suggestion that maybe things back in colonial times were different than they were. I understand it, but I don't completely agree with it. And part of me feels that if it's wrong to cast a white actor in a minority role, then the reverse should be wrong, too. Disney/Marvel got flak for casting Tilda Swinton as "the Ancient One" in the Avengers movies, because that's been established as an Asian (and male) character. If that's wrong, then so is casting that's overly racially diverse. "Well, who's to say a black man can't play George Washington?" I say that of course he CAN, but I'm still free to question the motives of that casting. And if white comedians are getting in trouble for appearing in blackface, then we should also question the Wayans Brothers performing in white-face in that movie.)
Apparently, we can't even call Siamese cats "Siamese" any more, either. Here I think things have really gone too far into the P.C. world. That's the name of the breed, it's not derogatory in any way, we have Scottish terriers and French poodles and English bulldogs and nobody seems to care about them, and there are Pekingese dogs and Persian cats, so what's the big deal about "Siamese"? In the original movie the two cats that came over with Aunt Sarah and wrecked the house sang a whole song about the fact that they were "Si-a-meese if you please" and OK, the tune was a little sing-songy and it had a little bit of an Oriental flair to it, but was that racist? The Siamese cats have now been replaced by a different breed, Devon Rexes, and that whole song got replaced by a new one, "What a Shame" and I say, what a shame that Disney anticipated a backlash for keeping the old song intact. There isn't even a country called Siam any more, so who would get offended? Look, we changed the name of Siamese twins to "conjoined twins" (the most famous set of conjoined twins happened to be from Siam, that was an awful turn of events, I'll admit) but that doesn't mean that everything from the old Siam needs to be re-named. Right now we're going through a phase in America where suddenly everything from the Old South has to be re-named, the music group "Lady Antebellum" is now called "Lady A", and even the Dixie Chicks are now just called "The Chicks". Well, there you go, racism solved! That oughta do it! It's just a bit ridiculous.
Look, I don't think we should have confederate flags or statues of confederate heroes, either. But while trying to erase the past might help us feel better in the short-term, it's simply not a long-term solution. Change takes time, and we need to make sure we don't backslide - we need to keep the conversation going so that people in the future can learn from the past. If we don't talk about the Holocaust, we risk it happening again, and the same goes for slavery, discrimination and racial injustice. The South lost the Civil War, so there really shouldn't be people waving that flag and trying to keep those ideals alive. But if we start mandating how people should think, or what language they can or can't use, or force movies to cast black actors in traditionally white roles, aren't we giving up some of the freedom ideals that should be woven into the fabric of our country? We can create laws and fines that punish people for being prejudiced and bigoted, but true change has to come from within, and that takes a long time - in the meantime we still have freedom of speech and freedom of thought, and occasionally that means listening to some language and ideas that we don't personally agree with.
Beyond all that, I think it's a waste of F. Murray Abraham's talents to cast him as the Italian restaurant owner. Was Stanley Tucci not available? It could have been a fun "Big Night" reference. This guy got a freakin' Oscar for playing Salieri in "Amadeus" and now he's got a 3-minute role feeding DOGS spaghetti and meatballs? This is almost as bad as casting John Malkovich as a disgruntled TV writer on the convention circuit in "Supercon"! (here's the real scandal - I just found out that the "F." in his name doesn't stand for anything, he was born Murray Abraham and added the "F." later himself, so it's not short for "Fred" or "Franklin", it's just "F.")
While we're on the topic of names, I never really understood the character names in this film - the synopsis and IMDB credits list the names of Lady's owners as "Jim Dear" and "Darling", which I always took to not be their real names, but just what Lady heard them CALL each other all the time. So this is what Lady would THINK their names are, because that's what she's heard, plus she's a dog. So what ARE their real names? If their last name is "Dear" than the woman's full name is "Darling Dear", and that's a little much, isn't it? What is the name on their mailbox, on their mail? I want to know...
But the main message of this film is about rescuing dogs from shelters, and that does go a long way with me, even though I'm a cat owner, never owned a dog (but most of them love me, anyway). Thankfully most of the dogs seen in the pound here get rescued or adopted, despite the efforts of the villainous dogcatcher. For this reason I'm going to try to let a lot of things slide here, and one of the few silver linings during this pandemic has been reports of more people working from home, spending time with their families and adopting more pets - rescuing over breeding. That's great, and some shelters I think were even saying they were running out of dogs to adopt. Let's try and keep that going, people. Keep your kittehs and doggos safe and sheltered this July 4, don't let them near the fireworks and try to keep them calm and happy if a bunch of knuckleheads are shooting off firecrackers in your neighborhood.
Oh, and this is NOT my planned film for the July 4 theme, I'm behind by one day, but it's coming up next. I'll just count that as a second film on the same day.
Also starring Thomas Mann (last seen in "The Highwaymen"), Kiersey Clemons (last seen in "Flatliners"), Yvette Nicole Brown (last seen in "The Ugly Truth"), Adrian Martinez (last seen in "Morning Glory"), F. Murray Abraham (last heard in "How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World"), Arturo Castro (last seen in "Snatched"), Ken Jeong (last seen in "Crazy Rich Asians"), Curtis Lyons (last seen in "Game Night"), Kate Kneeland, Darryl W. Handy (last seen in "Just Mercy"), Denitra Isler (ditto), Robert Walker-Branchaud (last seen in "Father Figures"), Roger Payano, Charles Orr, Parvesh Cheena, Matt Mercurio (last seen in "The Leisure Seeker") and the voices of Tessa Thompson (last seen in "Between Two Ferns: The Movie"), Justin Theroux (last seen in "On the Basis of Sex"), Sam Elliott (last seen in "A Star Is Born" (2018)), Ashley Jensen (last seen in "Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story"), Benedict Wong (ditto), Janelle Monae (last seen in "Moonlight"), Nate Wonder, Roman GianArthur, James Bentley, Jentel Hawkins, Ara Storm O'Keefe, Aemon Wolf O'Keefe.
RATING: 5 out of 10 riverboat musicians
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