"The Princess and the Frog" - Disney's return to traditional animation... and Disney Princesses

The Princess and the Frog is Disney's newest Disney Princess film. As a kid, when Tiana (Elizabeth Dampier) heard the story of the princess and the frog, she was uninterested in meeting a prince, and even less interested in kissing a frog. Her dream is to own a restaurant, which she shares with her father James (Terrence Howard). When she grows up (and is now voiced by Anika Noni Rose), her father is dead, and she works as a waitress in New Orleans, trying to save up enough money to purchase a building to make into a restaurant; however, she seems to not have any time or desire for fun. She eventually comes up with the money... or so it would seem. She's been outbid and has a limited time to come up with the remaining money or she'll lose the property. Meanwhile, Prince Naveen (Bruno Campos) has recently made his way into town. Naveen mooched off of his rich parents and didn't do a thing for himself, thus he was abandoned. His plan is to marry a princess and live off of her. However, he is turned into a frog by the voodoo priest Doctor "Shadow-Man" Facilier (Keith David), who prays on the weakness of others to get what he wants. Naveen's butler, Lawrence (Peter Bartlett), who is fed up with Naveen, meets Facilier and is turned into the prince as part of a plan concocted by Facilier. However, rich Charlotte "Lottie" La Bouff (Jennifer Cody) has fallen in love with Naveen and wants to marry him; Lawrence, disguised as Naveen, plans to marry her. On the flip side, the real Naveen sees Tiana in a princess costume, and asks for a kiss in exchange for the money to fund her dream restaurant... but since Tiana isn't really a princess, she is turned into a frog instead! A series of events sends them to the bayou, where they learn about Mama Odie (Jenifer Lewis), who may have the power to make the two human again, and they team up with Louis the alligator (Michael-Leon Wooley) who also wants to be human so he can play professional jazz, as well as Ray the firefly (Jim Cummings), who has fallen in love with a star he thinks is another firefly.

John Goodman voices Charlotte's father Eli "Big Daddy" La Bouff, and Oprah Winfrey voiced Tiana's mother Eudora.

Allow me to start off this review with a little history lesson. In 1937, Walt Disney Pictures created a legendary film... the first ever full-length animated film, and the first ever Disney Princess film... Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. (It's recently been re-released to DVD and Blu-Ray.) They continued with such features including Cinderella (1950) and Sleeping Beauty (1959). The 1990s was known to some as "The Disney Renaissance", including films such as The Little Mermaid (1989), Aladdin (1992), Pocahontas (1995), Mulan (1998), and the at-the-time highest grossing animated film (and still highest for traditional animation), The Lion King (1994). In early 2000, the term "Disney Princess" was coined, as a franchise that included (respectively) Snow White, Cinderella, Princess Aurora, Ariel, Jasmine, Pocahontas, and Mulan, and was largely used for merchandising opportunities. Looks like Disney's found another gold mine, huh?

... Well, not exactly.

In 1995, Pixar Animation Studios created the first ever feature-length computer animated film, Toy Story. Yeah, I don't need to explain, you've read all this before in my review for the double-feature. While many moviegoers saw this as a new advancement, others saw it as a downfall - soon, alongside Pixar, other companies started doing computer animated films as well. A notable example is DreamWorks, best known for the Shrek franchise, with their first picture Antz (1998), and I think they've only done two traditionally animated features (The Road to El Dorado and Spirit). Fox Animation Studios, known for 2-D films such as Anastasia (1997), closed down and merged with Blue Sky studios to do CGI films too, notably the Ice Age franchise as well as Robots (2005) and Horton Hears a Who! (2008) and the upcoming The Lorax (2012). Combine that was Sony Pictures Animation films such as Open Season (2006) and their most recent picture Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs (2009), and you've got yourself a new era. Eventually, Pixar's Finding Nemo (2003) overtook The Lion King as the highest grossing animated film, which itself was overtaken by DreamWorks' Shrek 2 (2004) which is now the fourth-highest grossing film domestically unadjusted for ticket inflation. Even this year, DreamWorks' Monsters vs. Aliens was the highest-grossing film of the spring and is still one of the top films of the year, Sony's Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs took the #1 spot for two consecutive weeks (Pixar's Up nearly did the same thing), and Blue Sky's Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs is now the third-highest grossing film on the foreign front as well as the third-highest grossing film domestically to have never hit #1. Monsters vs. Aliens, Up, and Ice Age 3 are living proof that 3-D is the new 2-D.

Eventually, Disney saw little profit in sticking to traditional 2-D animation, therefore they announced Home on the Range (2004) to be their last traditionally animated film (as if to prove their point, it bombed at the box office). So Disney decided to make their own independent CGI films such as Chicken Little (2005), Meet the Robinsons (2007), and Bolt (2008). Could this be the end of American-made theatrical 2-D animated films?

... For awhile, it seems so, but not anymore. The Princess and the Frog is Disney's return to traditional 2-D animation! Now that I've finished boring you with the history lesson, it's on to the actual review.

I had been waiting for this film for so long... and now it's finally here. The only other Disney Princess film I've ever seen on the big screen was Mulan. I had forgotten what 2-D animation looked like on the big screen (well, American animation, since I did see Ponyo earlier this year). What else is there to say? I loved everything about this film! The animation, the music, the characters, the slapstick gags... this is perfect! I know I'm changing my mind again, but this is my new favorite film of 2009, and with just three weeks left, this is gonna be hard to top! On top of it all, Tiana is a great example of a Disney Princess... the early Princesses were too reliant on their princes. Only Jasmine and Mulan seemed to be independent (well, not so much Jasmine... in a way, Aladdin did save her, but it's more figurative, and I just liked her attitude mostly) and strong role models... now we have a new one. Tiana's only drawbacks were that she is a workaholic who doesn't believe in fun, but it's understandable because that was how she was raised, and she was determined to see to it that her dream came true, and I won't spoil the rest for the two people who can't figure it out. Also, at one point during the film, she was sad when she saw what she thought was Naveen turned human again and actually believed that he had deserted her even though Mama Odie blatantly stated that when Naveen's curse was broken, Tiana's would be too, and she was still a frog (Ray even points that out shortly before that scene begins). It was also fun spotting references to other Disney films, such as Princess dolls on a shelf, but there were some references I think I made up, such as Louis saying "I couldn't figure out the topography... or the geography" or something like that, which immediately made me think of the Genie's line from Aladdin "I'm history! No wait, I'm mythology!" It's also worth noting that Tiana is the first black Disney princess, and the first African-American one. But don't worry - this film is not going to receive the Song of the South treatment.

The film got a G rating, however, there's some stuff to look out for, mainly violence. Most of it was just slapstick, but anyway: after Tiana is turned into a frog, she and Naveen float on balloons, which are popped on a tree branch and chased by cranes and alligators through the swamp. Louis gets hit with many thorns, which Ray pulls out of him. Shadow-Man has many creepy silhouettes that seem to be able to grab things and have him actually hold them. In a few scenes, the frogs say that "They're not covered in slime - it's actually mucous". Shadow-Man almost uses voodoo magic and sticks a pin in Lawrence/Naveen, but ultimately fails. In a flashback, Louis mentions he tried to play jazz for a band, but they shot at him. Guns are seen recurring throughout the film, usually in Louis' mind (at one point, we see what looks like silhouettes of men with guns, but it's really just musical instruments). Shadow-Man also mentions needing frog blood for something. Shadow-Man steps on Ray, but I won't reveal his outcome. As for sexual content... there's some subtle stuff. Charlotte's dress shows her cleavage, and she shoves tissues in it at one point and pulls on it when she mentions how beautiful she is. After Naveen asks Tiana for a kiss, she says, "Just one kiss?" Naveen says, "Well, if it leaves you hungry for more, then..." and licks his lips (we saw that in the trailer). Several bottles of champagne are present, and there's some name-calling such as "stick-in-the-mud".

Should you see it? Well, do you like Disney Princesses? Do you miss 2-D traditional animation? Do you like animated musicals? Are you a fan of any of the VAs (many of them have done Broadway shows, so you may recognize their singing voices) or composer Randy Newman? If the answer to any of those questions was "Yes", then by all means... SEE IT. You will not regret it.