Review: The Princess and the Frog
I can’t really call myself an animation blogger, but I’m certainly a film blogger who has a vocal love of animation (particularly classic American animation). As such, I felt obligated to see The Princess and the Frog, Disney’s return to hand drawn musical fairy tales, but I wasn’t terribly enthusiastic. The trailer was a jumble of too many disparate elements, and to be honest I was a little annoyed they didn’t hire someone more daring than Randy Newman to do the music. I love Newman’s work, and I know he knows his way around the music of New Orleans (and everywhere else), but it would’ve been nice to see the job go to someone younger, hipper, and maybe, you know, black.
Newman does, of course, pull through just fine. The music isn’t knock-your-socks-off spectacular, but it’s fun while it’s happening and it moves the story along. In addition to the swinging jazz that plays in the New Orleans sequences, there’s also some zydeco (performed by fireflies) when the story moves out into the bayou, and a great (spiritually nonspecific) gospel number by the wise woman character, Mama Odie. I was disappointed that the Shadow Man’s big number wasn’t a little stronger, because villain songs are often my favorite. “Friends on the Other Side” starts out great, but it peters out for too long when the tarot readings start, and the climax seems to come from nowhere.
The story follows a pretty simple romance/quest/overcoming adversity formula, but it stays pretty engaging throughout. Disney also does their best to make amends for some of the damaging messages they’ve injected into the culture in the past. The explicitly stated moral of this story is that you have to work to build the life you want- you can’t just wish on a star or wait for your prince to come. I loved how they deal with Prince Naveen’s acknowledgment that his pampered upbringing has left him with almost no useful skills. I also thought it was a nice touch that the spoiled rich girl, Charlotte, turns out to be a decent person and a good friend, just a problematic one. Making her a villain in the end would have been both easier and far less interesting.
As far as the race thing which many people (myself included) were just waiting for Disney to screw up, I think they did okay. The movie feels a little focus-grouped at times, but I’d call that an improvement over egregious racism. If the protagonist were white, the portrayals of the villain and helpful wise woman as black would be unfortunate, but with a majority-black cast everything seems pretty balanced out. The ambiguity of Prince Naveen’s race is a little strange, particularly in the way he seems to be regarded by the film’s version of 1920′s society as an acceptable partner for either black or white women. Regardless of where he’s from (my guess was somewhere in French-colonized North Africa), it’s hard to believe that the Americans he meets wouldn’t want to immediately box him into a racial identity they understand and keep him there. Perhaps this is meant to be his aristocratic privilege mixed with the unique cultural dynamic of New Orleans?
The look of the film was beautiful, taking the old school Disney aesthetic and bringing it adeptly into the 21st Century. I loved the character designs, except for the Cajun firefly, who was a little too overtly silly-looking for me. Mama Odie was especially great, particularly the way her skin hangs off her face in the manner of the very old. Charlotte’s design was also a standout. You can see how she’d be regarded as a pretty girl, but her pug face has none of the classic Disney beauty about it. Tiana, in contrast, is immediately recognizable (for better or worse) as a “Disney Princess,” despite any efforts to give her recognizably black facial features. The frogs that she and Naveen transform into capture their human personalities to an impressive degree, while still maintaining their frogness (frogocity?).
Marketing aside, will The Princess and the Frog stand the test of time and be regarded as a Disney classic? Eh. Who knows what that even means anymore. It will certainly stand up better than anything they’ve made since The Lion King (all respect to the dedicated fans of The Emperor’s New Groove and Lilo and Stitch), which is no small feat. I hope that it leads to more big-scale animated musicals, and particularly more that are set in the last hundred years, and more protagonists of color. For all the problems people have with the stuff Disney produces (many of which I agree with), I’d love to see them go back to being a force to be reckoned with in the animation world, instead of continuing to focus their energy in the realms of television and pop music.
