The Princess and the Frog

2009 Disney cartoon

Rating: 16/20 (Jen: 16/20; Abbey: 17/20; Dylan: 10/20; Emma: 15/20)

Plot: All Tiana wants is to start her own restaurant to honor her father's dream and share her culinary talents with the people of New Orleans. She's been saving for years, coins and wadded-up bills in tin cans. Finally, she's able to purchase the property and bring her dreams to life, but the deal falls through at a masquerade party thrown by her childhood friend's family. Oh, snap! Meanwhile, a penniless prince has arrived in town and, tricked by a voodoo trickster Shadow Man with connections to the other side, has been turned into a frog. Tiana, a gal who knows her fairy tales, kisses him and immediately transforms into a frog herself. Oh, double snap! They journey in search of a way to reverse the curse while the Shadow Man tries to take over the city of New Orleans.

It's unfortunate that we didn't check this out in the theater. There was an amazing amount of color, color that just exploded on my tiny television screen, and I really wish I could have seen them bigger. Color is really what The Princess and the Frog is all about. There's a great local color with vibrant New Orleans and the surrounding bayou as the backdrops. And there are really colorful characters including a bunch of Cajan fireflies, a trumpet-blowing alligator, a blind old witchy woman, and others. The main characters are also lively, both with their personality and their movements. At times, it does seem like the characters are detached from the background, but for the most part, I like how they mingle with the setting, especially during the musical numbers. Lots of musical numbers, mostly, of course, penned by the ubiquitous Randy Newman. But really, who else could have done the soundtrack for this one? It's great work, too. The characters leap off the screen during the song and dance numbers, all engulfed with swirling kaleidoscopic imagery. Black princess Tiana is a worthy addition to the Disney princess canon, and her prince, though bordering on obnoxious at times, is a great dynamic character. And John Goodman's in it, and even yells out "This is what happens when you fuck a stranger in the ass!" a few times. But my favorite character is the bad guy, the flamboyantly evil Dr. Facilier, aka the Shadow Man. I love how his shadow has a mind of its own, and when he conjures up the evil spirits, who also appear as shadows, the animation gets wonderfully surreal. My expectations weren't incredibly high for this, probably a combination of me not being a princess and Disney not making things happen lately. But even though a lot of the ideas seem borrowed from other Disney animated features, it's all so beautifully executed and becomes something fresh, a jazzy fairy tale that's a feast for the eyes and ears.