I have recently seen "Lady And The Tramp" again and it is illustrative of why I prefer Bluth's films to Disney's. The Bluth film in this instance is "Balto", another dog romance but with a harder edge.
"Lady And The Tramp" is set in suburbia in the Teens, a favourite time and place for Disney. Everything is safe and sane in Disney's suburbia of the Teens, and the streets and alleyways are clean even on the wrong side of the tracks. The Tramp is a nice guy despite his vagabond ways; in fact, so are all the pound dogs. The only real villains are the Aunt and her cats (and the rat, of course).
"Balto", conversely, is set on the last American frontier. Balto is also a nice guy, but is set under much harsher conditions. Unlike Tramp, who is a dog amongst dogs despite being a mongrel, Balto is a pariah even among the street dogs because he is not merely a mongrel, but half-wolf.
The crisis in "Lady and the Tramp" revolves around an "anti-dog" babysitting aunt and her two cats, and is generally quite light, of little consequence compared to an epidemic amongst children. Tramp's moment of heroism is to save a baby from a rat (which the cats could have done just as well, if not better...). Balto, however, must save the sled team sent to get the medicine to save the children, and face society's scorn, the dangers of the wild, Steel's treachery, and his own self-doubt, to do so.
Lady is also a quite vapid creature compared to Jenna. Jenna is also a middle-class dog, but is not quite the innocent that Lady was (Nome, Alaska, is a harder place than middle-American suburbia of the teens) and is rather stronger than Lady, to the point of saving Balto from a bear attack.
In short, "Lady and the Tramp" is a nice enough children's tale. Balto is an epic. I prefer epics.
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