It’s hard not to feel the weight bearing down on “The Princess & the Frog” while watching it. Every second, every decision, feels like it could stand for the potential rebirth or the ultimate extinction for the art form of traditionally hand drawn animation. It’s rare to see a movie whose every frame could decide the fate of a medium.
After all, this is the first traditionally animated film the Walt Disney Company has produced since 2004’s regrettable cowboy comedy “Home on the Range.” Add to that the fact that “The Princess & the Frog” will be bringing us the first African American princess, soon to be absorbed by Disney’s insanely popular Disney Princess branding/merchandising machine.
What’s amazing is that, for a movie with so much weighing on it, “The Princess and the Frog” remains such a bubbly, lively, beautifully rendered entertainment.
The basic story of “The Princess and the Frog” is borrowed from the classic fairy tale “The Frog Prince.” In “The Princess and the Frog,” the focus shifts to the Princess (who, truth be told, isn’t a princess until very late in the movie), Tiana (Anika Noni Rose) who is working multiple waitress jobs in jazz-era New Orleans. She wants to save up and open her own restaurant, and in one of the more visually thrilling musical numbers, she presents her dream to her mother (Oprah Winfrey) in a very art deco 2-D style. She’s hired by a kindly sugar baron (John Goodman) to cater a masquerade ball that will be attended by the visiting Prince Naveen (Bruno Campos). Little does Tiana know that the Prince has been transformed into a lowly amphibian by a charismatic fortuneteller, voodoo priest, and conjurer of black magic Doctor Facilier (Keith David, stealing every scene he’s in). Remembering the fairy tale from her youth, Tiana kisses the frog prince and (in a nice twist) is transformed into a frog herself!
From there, the movie becomes a race against time as the two frogs (now displaced deep in the wild bayou) scramble to get back to New Orleans before the curse takes hold forever. There are a ton of mistaken identities, talking animals, and inventive musical numbers (courtesy of Randy Newman) along the way, and the entire movie glides along, bopping from one adventure to the next.
The movie is incredibly funny, literally from the first sequence, exhibiting the kind of whip-fast humor that has made the Pixar movies so consistently hilarious. But, it should be noted, that this humor isn’t at the cost of the dramatic or emotional underpinnings of the movie, which are actually quite strong. There are also moments of frightening (but still somewhat playful) intensity, particularly when Facilier is dealing with the dark forces on “the other side” that fuel his power (if you’ve wanted to see demonic dancing voodoo dolls in a Disney picture, there’s a musical number in here for you).
In fact, the musical numbers are another high point of the movie. Multiple times during the screening we attended, at the conclusion of one of the musical numbers the audience erupted in applause, like we were attending a Broadway show. Randy Newman does some of his best movie music work in years, thankfully abandoning the weepy over-sentimentality of his work on “Cars” and “Toy Story 2.” The songs here have a real verve, a poppy liveliness that suits the many references to jazz.
As for the touchy race issues, the movie handles them fairly well. There’s an early sequence with Tiana’s mother and father (played by Terrence Howard) where the animators have gone out of their ways to explicitly illustrate that both parents are wearing wedding bands. We thought about this and couldn’t come up with another instance where wedding bands have been such a big deal. Then it hit us – they wanted to make sure everyone knew that Tiana’s parents were married before they had her. It’s an instance of cultural sensitivity that’s forgivable even though it’s a little too blatant. Elsewhere, the racial divide is evident but never dwelled upon, and gives the entire movie some nice cultural depth.
Speaking of depth, the animation here is simply gorgeous. While character animation-wise things started off a little shaky, by the time the entire host of characters is introduced, you will be entirely won over. There are so many subtle inflections that make the characters come alive, it really is staggering. Of particular note is a moment when a jazz-crazed alligator hops aboard a paddleboat. The validity of hand-drawn animation is cemented here. It’s been so long since we’ve seen this kind of big, brassy animation on the big screen that it was almost like seeing something entirely new.
Overall, “The Princess and the Frog” is a resounding success. There are a couple of moments that drag but overall, this film by Ron Clements and John Musker (who, for a brief period before Disney purchased Pixar, had been fired from the studio) is an immensely enjoyable, absolutely breathtaking-looking entertainment that doesn’t let its political correctness bungle a wonderful story. — Drew Taylor