As a tribute to their classic 2D animation history, Disney made The Princess and the Frog, its first animated film to focus positively on primarily African-American characters (no comment on Song of the South here). The style is indeed reminiscent of classic Disney films, like Cinderella, Snow White and Beauty and the Beast, however this one lacks almost all of the charm and magic of those.
Tiana is a poor daughter of a New Orleans seamstress who dreams of opening a Cajun restaurant when she grows up. Her friend is Charlotte, the white daughter of the richest man in town (I'll clearly ignore the racial undertones here). Prince Naveen, a mysterious dark Europeanish royal, comes to town and meets with a voodoo witchdoctor who swindles him, turning him into a frog. Tiana meets the frog and is convinced that if she kisses him, he will become a prince again, but instead she is also turned into a frog - voodoo's a bitch, ain't it! The two frogs have to go into the woods to find another voodoo witchdoctor lady to turn them back to their human forms.
Typical of Disney animated features, the film has a bunch of music and songs in it (composed and written by Disney mainstay Randy Newman). Sadly none of these songs are memorable at all, even though there is a nice effort to include New Orleans styles of zydeco, jazz and blues. As I watched these songs, I think I mostly felt that they were a nice efforts, but just not as good as recent Disney fare (Under the Sea, Be Our Guest, Hakuna Matata).
Mostly, the story is pretty dull and stretched out way too far. Froggy Naveen and Froggy Tiana spend close to half the movie in the woods on the way to the good voodoo lady with almost nothing important happening. There is so much set-up to the story (Tiana's dream of a restaurant, Charlotte's greedy family, Naveen being swindled) that when the story finally kicks off, it's almost over.
There's another thing here, which is a bit more sensitive, which is the fact that it is the first major feature that Disney has done with primarily African-American characters. To me, it rides the delicate edge of being rather culturally insensitive too closely. That Tiana has to be the poor daughter of a domestic and that her best friend is rich and white might be historically accurate, but feels rather racist considering in a Disney fantasy world people of any color can be anything - why does the one black movie have to be so tied to historic Southern culture?
That the film takes place in New Orleans and features voodoo so prominently is also a bit too much, I think. Again, why can't black people live in a wonderful dream world of castles with good witches and bad witches? I think in an effort to combine political correctness with real-world based fantasy, Disney went a bit too far - or not far enough. I don't know why, after so much success with Brothers-Grimm-esque fairy tales Disney had to turn a story on its head and divert from the traditional Frog Prince story.
Stars: 1.5 of 4
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Well, I thought the film was not bad -- never great but never terrible. I don't feel any compunction to defend it and it's faded from memory pretty quickly. But I will take issue with two points. First, you said that Disney made the film as a tribute to its 2-D history. I disagree. Disney shut down its 2-D animation and idiotically said they'd only make computer animated films in the future (which is just as dumb as them now saying all their animated films in the future will be 3-D). When the Pixar people came in, they immediately restarted the 2-D animation department because they recognized that certain films need to be made in certain styles and eliminating one of them from your repertoire was silly. It may not be common but we still make movies in black and white. And we still make musicals. And we make some movies with film and others on digital, etc. The Princess and the Frog was made in 2-D because that was the style that best served the story.
ReplyDeleteI think the original story of The Frog Prince -- frog shows up, asks girl to kiss him, she does, he becomes a prince and they live happily ever after -- would last about 8 minutes. Though not successful, their changes -- like having her turn into a frog and other backstory elements -- were a reasonable attempt to flesh out a very slight story.
Finally, the African American element. Unlike you, many others complained that Disney finally made a film with an African heroine and yet she spent much of the film as a green frog. That's true, but the film is steeped in African American culture, both heroes and villains are primarily black and New Orleans culture is nicely on display. Yes, our heroine comes from a working class family. So did Belle in Beauty and the Beast. So did Pinocchio. So did orphan Oliver in Oliver and Company. So did the little Hawaiian girl in Lilo & Stitch. Mulan is not a princess either, just a girl from a middle class (?) family. Yes, Disney has many tales of royalty, but also many about regular folk. Our heroine is smart and hardworking. What's wrong with that? Disney would be wise to tackle any number of Africn folk-tales and tell a real African story that features a prince or princess or the daughter or son of a chieftain. But The Princess and the Frog was not out of whack with other Disney films.
And when the heck will Disney just release The Song of the South on DVD with appropriate commentary and context? The animated folk tales are quite good, as I remember and it's an Oscar winner and just silly of them to try and hide it and pretend it never happened.