[8.1/10] Nostalgia is a canard. It’s easy to look back on the past and believe that things were simpler then, because chances are, *you* were simpler then. If you're a child who’s lucky enough to have loving caretakers, the past can take on a gauzy hue. You might yearn for a particular time in place, with the idea that the world was better at the time, but what you're really yearning for is a time when your problems were small, and more to the point, there were other people responsible for taking care of them. There’s a peculiar sense in which the story of Lady, the naive cocker-spaniel who makes up half of *Lady and the Tramp*’s titular duo, is the perfect vehicle for that idea of young naivete and simplicity. The movie is, in a roundabout way, a coming of age story. Lady is sheltered and pampered. From the opening sequence where an impossibly adorable puppy whines enough to be allowed to sleep in her owners’ bed (a tradition that lives on even when she’s grown), it’s clear that the well-groomed pup lives a charmed life. But it is also a charming life! *Lady in the Tramp* is in contention for being Disney’s most cozycore film ever. The 1910s New England pastiche is completely awash in welcoming touches, inside and out. The animators build a warm and inviting ecosystem for Lady and her pals to occupy. The Queen Ann homestead of Darling and Jim Dear sits in an unfathomably quaint neighborhood full of picturesque homes. Its inside is full of lovingly-appointed but lived-in spaces, with a sort of love and energy that practically spills out of the screen. And in the adjoining yards, full of small dangers and minor curiosities, Lady finds her canine companions who show she’s got more than just humans on her side. That's part of the film’s magic trick. *Lady and the Tramp* tells its coming of age story by luring us into this simple, delightful, (if somewhat provincial) world that Lady occupies, and then forces her to inhabit one that is much rougher, more exciting, and more complicated. The jaunt through the fun of flummoxing beavers, the romance of an alleyway cerenade, the danger of the dog pound, wouldn’t mean as much if they didn’t contrast the chaos of the outside world with the comparably easy comforts of Lady’s normal domain. But even that's changing! Part of why *Lady and the Tramp* works so well as a metaphor for the experience of childhood and growing up is the arrival of a new baby, one who threatens Lady’s place of pride in the Darling/Jim Dear household. The sense that your parents might not love you as much when there’s someone new to shower their affections upon tracks the feelings of many new big brothers and big sisters. A sense of both excitement and concern about what lies beyond the garden gate hits home for young souls. And even the disruption of some unfamiliar relative coming to look after you, not throwing off the rhythms of your normal life, is relatable. As much as the film tracks with those young adult experiences, it also tracks wonderfully with dog experiences! The movie’s creative team nicely walks the line between making the pet contingent of the film human enough to feel like characters the audience can recognize and relate to, while also making them canine enough to represent heightened but realistic versions of our poochie pals. Much of that is simply the characterization. Lady’s naivete about human ways and pride in her collar, Tramp’s stray dog freedom and rambunctious spirit, the territorial protectiveness of Jock and Trusty, all take genuine canine dispositions and heighten them in clever and entertaining ways. The split between barks when the humans are at the center of attention, and spoken words when the pups are in focus, helps create the sense that we’re getting a glimpse into the world at their level. But much of it is also the animation. I’m not sure any on-screen puppy has ever been as adorable as little Lady. There too, the character designs blend expressive eyes and suggested features like hair and smiles, with detailed and charming animation that brilliantly capture and exaggerate the real life movements of animals. The humans here move with a recognizable gait, but with every bound, scamper, and tussle, you’d have to be made of stone not to appreciate the expressive-yet-realistic movements of the film’s canine contingent. And so much of the film is “shot” at roughly knee-level, giving us a view of the human world from fifteen inches off the floor that situates us nicely in the dogs’ perspective. Apart from the players here, both furry and hairless, the film is a feast for the eyes. A constant carousel of stunning settings grabs your attention, from snowy boroughs, to sun-dappled landscapes, the rain-drenched city streets. In addition to its heightened realism, the film’s trio of directors aren’t afraid to offer more stylistic sequences. Everything from match cuts for Lady’s worried imagine spots, or an impressionsitic montage covering the passage of time until the baby arrives, or the heart-pumping battle between Tramp and a rat that frames them in silhouette save for their eyes and teeth, shows the acolytes of the famed animation studio showing off what the medium can achieve. The piece de resistance, though, is the use of light and shadow. The way the light changes in Lady’s room in the opening vignette, depending on the vagaries of a swinging door, is nothing short of brilliant. The artful use of shadow to depict Lady witnessing Tramp fight to defend her against a pack of angry strays is superb. And the way the light reflects on city street puddles, or beams out of houses through a snowy landscape, or frames Tramp’s rodent battle, all show off a level of craft that is, if not unparalleled, then certainly top tier within the Disney pantheon, which is saying something. Unfortunately, some of this exquisite craft, that feels as though it is from a bygone era, is also used in service of cheap and sometimes repugnant stereotypes that are also from a bygone era. Plenty of ink has been spilled about the offensive depiction of the siamese cats, with their caricatured look and broken english. But what’s forgotten is how often *Lady and the Tramp* defaults to nationality as personality beyond that. Scottish dogs, Irish cops, Mexican chihuahuas, Italian pasta-makers, and the occasional English, Russian, or vaguely Southern pooch are all cheap, and sometimes repugnant shortcuts to try to add color to the world of the film. The exaggerated depictions of any non-WASP ethnic group date the film as much, if not more, than its throwback setting. But if there’s a silver lining to any of this, it’s that it adds to the sense of class consciousness at the center of the film’s project. Lady is friends with the scottie and the swamp-searching smellhound. But for the most part, her world is staid and simple. When she ventures beyond the protections of her manicured neighborhood, she meets folks of many different stripes (sometimes literally) that she wouldn’t run into had she not ventured forth beyond the comforts of home. Of course, her entree into that world is Tramp, the “wrong side of the tracks” mutt who serves as her guide to the rougher edges of the city, and her tempter into a world of not belonging anywhere or to anyone. Tramp is a triumph in characterization. He represents the archetypal bad boy who lures the good girl toward adventure and corruption. But he too is a charmer. His paeon toward freedom amid the train tracks in contrast to the confining expectations of staying behind picket fences has an intuitive appeal. (Hello [*Aladdin*](https://trakt.tv/comments/234427) and [*Pirates of the Caribbean*](https://trakt.tv/comments/309349) fans!) And his motivated speech about what happens to a dog when the baby arrives sounds like he speaks from the vantage point of unfortunate experience in that department. In short, you get why Tramp is the way he is in intuitive terms. You get why Lady would be charmed by him. And you get the twin angles and fun and fear he represents. *Lady in the Tramp* is, at times, more about its wondrous little vignettes than it is about its plot. (And the vignettes are all extraordinary enough to make the film worth the price of admission.) But once Tramp arrives, there’s a tidy little story about feeling affronted by changes at home, exploring the promises of what lies beyond it, and realizing that there are parts that will make you feel frightened or foolish alongside the one that make you feel fun and free. The movie expertly captures the spirit of that, and doing so through our canine companions is an achievement in itself. The film isn’t just about Lady’s romantic yet harrowing adventures, though. It’s about Tramp’s journey as well, from being a bit of a sly scoundrel to settling down somewhere because he finally cares about someone enough to make him give all that up. Tramp’s motives seem a little questionable at that start. He has the cadence of a conman. But this being a Disney movie, he also has a heart of gold, one that leads him to save Lady from back alley mutts, feel ashamed when she calls him out for his serial lothario ways, and prove his loyalty when he wars with the rodent to protect the baby. If Lady’s story is about growing up and becoming more worldly, Tramp’s is one about giving up the rootless pleasures of the wider world for the connection and warmth of something simpler but more profound. That's the cinch. Lady fears being replaced and escapes a bad and unfair situation at home, but all’s right by the end. She ends up loving the baby; her owners understand what happened instinctively, and even mean old Aunt Sarah seems properly penitent by the final scene. Tramp may make his stray dog freedom seem like the most enervating and liberating thing in the world, but when he finds someone he truly wants to love and protect, he’s happy to trade it in for the domestic life and place of permanent belonging he ran down earlier. In the world of Disney, at least, you *can* go home. *Lady and the Tramp* has plenty of story to spur its filmmaking, and a host of charming characters to populate it and lure the audience in. But what it’s most awash in is *feeling* The feeling of home. The feeling of adventure. The feeling of danger and new experience and the sad mix of woe and gratitude when someone pays a grave price on your behalf. And most of all, the feeling of that return to warmth and simplicity, having experienced the wider world in all its fulsomeness and fury, and getting to go back to what you know and love. In that, the film is suffused with a quiet longing. It’s no coincidence that *Lady and the Tramp* is set around 1910. That same era provides the setting for other Disney coming of age tales like [*Mary Poppins*](https://trakt.tv/comments/305559) and [*Peter Pan*](https://trakt.tv/comments/294193). That just so happens to be the time when Walt Disney himself was a child. The ostensibly New England village is a pastiche of elements from various places, including many from Walt’s hometown in Marceline, Missouri. Both are represented in the “Main Street, USA” section of Disneyland, Walt’s attempt to build a larger than life playground with both his safest childhood setting and the heightened adventures he imagined. Art is a place where that nostalgia can go, where it can exist safely, where you can channel that warmth and simplicity into something splendid and beautiful. Things are never really as simple as when you're a child whose world is too cabined to really contemplate the bigger problems, or when you're a puppy who’s never really seen what’s on the other side of the picket fence. But amid the comforts of fiction, you can go off and see the rugged and ragged things out there, and still have those simple joys to return to. It’s not always so easy in real life, but in *Lady and the Tramp*, Walt and his collaborators found a way to go back home.