Being a princess is not always an easy way out of a problem.
If there’s anything modern about The Princess and the Frog, that would be it. Touted as Disney’s big return to hand-drawn animation, it’s the first of the Disney Princess line that doesn’t have its main character escape hardship by finding true love in a rich suitor. Though the two main characters spend most of the movie as a couple of frogs (a fact that might raise a few eyebrows, considering how much has been made about this being Disney's first "black princess") going on an enchanted adventure, it's in human form that they really make lasting impressions.
Our heroine Tiana (Anika Noni Rose) is certainly no princess. She’s a woman whose idea of happily ever after is buying a fixer-upper factory to turn into her very own restaurant. Her prince, a flirt named Naveen (Bruno Campos) from a nondescript Latin country, doesn’t ride into town (in this case, 1920's New Orleans) on a white horse. Rather, he comes looking for a gift horse. After years of behaving like many modern-day royalty—that is, partying and chasing skirts while mooching off of the family crest—Prince Naveen is cut off by his parents. His only hope to stay on the high life is to marry a wealthy Southern belle, so he sets his eyes on pampered tart Charlotte (Jennifer Cody), who happens to be Tiana’s childhood friend—but the greedy voodoo priest Dr. Facilier (Keith David) gets to Naveen first.
Thus the Frog Prince.
Charlotte is an interesting character who I wish was in the movie more. The basis of the character is a satire of the Disney Princesses that came before; an exaggeration of the type of fairy tale maidens whose main asset is beauty and purpose in life is to wait doe-eyed for Prince Charming to whisk them away. She’s not an evil stepsister or a jealous competitor; she’s just shallow and a stark contrast to the modern-minded Tiana.
That’s why it’s such a betrayal for the film to then go where it does in the third act. I guess you can only be so modern in a Disney Princess movie before tradition takes over. As with the classics—and they stride the line between wanting to be different and wanting to be old school, often awkwardly—The Princess and the Frog is still selling the same dream to little girls everywhere. The dream of having a fairy tale wedding that requires absolutely no effort in achieving, let alone maintaining.
One of the film’s strongest themes that is hammered several times is the difference between “what you want” and “what you need.” As Tiana discovers over the course of the story, what she wants is a successful career, but what she really needs is a man to love her. And so with great predictability, she falls for Naveen, even though the film makes no effort to make that deadbeat the least bit deserving of Tiana.
All this could’ve been dismissed out of hand as the usual lovey-dovey fluff that occurs in these movies, of course, if it wasn’t what the entire story is centered on. This isn’t a story about a witch’s curse, or a stepmother’s vindictiveness, or any of that fantasy goodness that drove classics like Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella and Snow White. This is about a working-class woman with a specific dream and a specific problem, and the solution they give her is pretty appalling.
For animation enthusiasts, take comfort that the years of relying on Pixar's state-of-the-art wizardry had not made Disney complacent. Directed by veterans Ron Musker and John Clements (Aladdin, The Little Mermaid), the film carries the magical spectacle we expect it to. The animation is especially dazzling during the musical numbers, making full use of the New Orleans flavor. The music itself, unfortunately, is a bad case of missed opportunity. The setting provides the perfect excuse to introduce true Jazz Age music to young children, similar to how the great Lilo & Stitch used Elvis, but all we get is the same old familiar Randy Newman, only slightly disguised by trumpets and banjos.
Fitting, I suppose, for the movie.
"The Princess and the Frog" opens December 11, 2009 and is rated G. Animation, Children & Family, Fantasy, Musical, Romance. Directed by John Musker, Ron Clements. Written by Ron Clemens & John Musker and Rob Edwards. Starring Anika Noni Rose, Bruno Campos, Jenifer Lewis, Jennifer Cody, Jim Cummings, John Goodman, Keith David, Michael Leon Wooley, Oprah Winfrey, Peter Bartlett, Terrence Howard.
