The Princess and the Frog

The Princess and the Frog is Disney's return to 2D animation. It looks great and its fun. I hope it was successful enough to prompt Disney to return to what it does best.

The makers deserve a lot of credit for going with something different from simply the Frog Prince fairy tale. Instead, they have loosely adapted the novel The Frog Princess by E. D. Baker. I assume this is because it would have taken quite a bit to stretch the small story into a full length film.

A lot of publicity went toward their decision to make the lead character black. It worked because it worked in the story. Though this is obviously not the first time a Disney lead female wasn't white. How about Aladdin, Pocahontas, and Mulan?

Setting the story in New Orleans gave the movie a natural match in voodoo. It gave us our villain, Dr. Facilier (Dr. Easy?), the Shadow Man. Whenever he's shoing off his magic evilness, they surround him with neon images. Not only is he about as scary as most other Disney villains, but it's easy to picture him in a Disneyland ride.

The best decision was to set the film in New Orleans. It's a fantastic city, and The Princess and the Frog puts it on full display. The food, the buildings, the party, and the mighty Mississippi are here (though of course, it's a kids movie, so not so much of the party). Again, it works nicely with the story.

But the best reason to pick New Orleans is the music. Each song has a New Orleans feel, whether its Swing, Dixieland, or Gospel. The music was always fun. Now I'll let you decide if the next part is a positive or a negative. There weren't really any songs that stuck in my head after watching. None of the songs were what Stephen King calls an "Ear Worm." While I liked the music while watching the movie, I wasn't humming any of them when I left.