the blog of nathan loding

The Princess and the Frog (2009)
Voice tal­ents of: Anika Noni Rose, Bruno Cam­pos, Keith David
Directed by: Ron Clements and John Musker
Writ­ten by:Ron Clements, John Musker, and Rob Edwards
Rated: G
Rat­ing: 3 (out of five)

I haven’t thought much of Dis­ney Ani­ma­tion for a long while.  I really had to think com­ing out of the the­ater about what movies they had released in the last decade.  Disney’s part­ner­ship with Pixar has far out­weighed Disney’s solo releases.  Those that I could think of I didn’t par­tic­u­larly enjoy.  Whether it’s just my imag­i­na­tion or not, but Dis­ney Ani­ma­tion Stu­dios has had a los­ing streak for while.

Pixar has proved recently that family-friendly enter­tain­ment need not be with­out a touch of dark­ness to it.  Some of the best children’s story are them­selves a lit­tle dark.  I think that it was this ele­ment that Disney’s most recent ani­mated adven­tures have lacked.  (Granted, Lilo & Stitch had some dark­ness to it.)

The Princess and the Frog is a strong return to ani­ma­tion for Dis­ney.  And it brings with it a very effec­tive and dark new villain.

We all know the orig­i­nal story of the “The Frog Princess.”  Dis­ney has changed things up by mov­ing the famil­iar story to Prohibition-era New Orleans, and thereby intro­duc­ing their first black Princess.  Wait, a Princess in 1920’s New Orleans?

Tiana is our hard-working hero­ine.  Her mother has worked as a tal­ented seam­stress to the rich upper crust of New Orleans for years, and her father worked incred­i­bly long days to keep his fam­ily finan­cially sta­ble.  He passed along his dream of own­ing a beau­ti­ful restau­rant to his daugh­ter, who has car­ried on his dream after his passing.

The upper crust child­hood friend of Tiana’s, Char­lotte, has been pin­ing after a Prince since she could say the word.  One day her dream seems like it’s about to come true.  A Prince from Mal­do­nia, Prince Naveen, is vis­it­ing New Orleans and will be stay­ing with Char­lotte and her family.

Enter the schem­ing voodoo Shadow Man, Dr. Facilier.  See­ing an oppor­tu­nity to swin­dle Charlotte’s fam­ily of their riches and take over the bustling port city, he begins work­ing his magic by turn­ing Naveen and, acci­den­tally but also for­tu­itously, Tiana, into frogs.

Naveen and Tiana must then race to get them­selves restored with the assis­tance of a great col­lec­tion of sup­port­ing char­ac­ters (Louis the trum­pet play­ing Alli­ga­tor, Ray the roman­tic fire­fly with his eye on the most beau­ti­ful fire­fly in the sky, and Mama Odie the ancient bayou-dwelling voodoo lady).

There isn’t an amaz­ing new ani­ma­tion tech­nique.  There aren’t immense visual land­scapes.  There aren’t “ooh-aah” 3D effects.  This is clas­sic ani­ma­tion, remind­ing us of Disney’s legacy as the king of ani­ma­tion.  This movie shows that some­one at Dis­ney still under­stands the art of hand-drawn ani­ma­tion, which most peo­ple in Hol­ly­wood dis­missed years ago, and shows that it’s still as lovely as ever.

Unfor­tu­nately, it’s not quite as mag­i­cal as those pre­vi­ous films.  There’s some­thing miss­ing … it’s so close!  The sound­track was sadly a lit­tle lack­ing (espe­cially con­sid­er­ing who wrote it!).  But I don’t think that’s the rea­son.  I don’t think Dis­ney has lost their magic, but per­haps they should focus on some­thing like The Princess and the Frog instead of mak­ing tem­po­rary teen sen­sa­tions.  And yes, I’ll say it: maybe they were being overly cau­tious with the African-American char­ac­ters, see­ing as their last ani­mated attempt is still noto­ri­ous, 63-years later!

While this film proves that Dis­ney hasn’t lost it, and that hand-drawn ani­ma­tion is still alive and kick­ing, it does fall short of being a true ani­mated classic.

Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCk7PNkoDw4