Princess and the Frog
Review By: Gordon Smith
Disney’s official Christmas release, The Princess and the Frog, is being highly promoted on two fronts, one retro and one progressive, both having to do with both meanings of the acronym “PC”. As for PC in the computer sense, the film marks the studio’s return to hand-drawn, two-dimensional cell animation. This is the style of Snow White, Pinocchio, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, The Lion King and other classics the studio was built upon, not Finding Nemo, Toy Story or Wall-E, the Pixar computer-generated gems that have won Oscars and kept them in Ka-Ching-land.
On the PC-as-in-politically-correct front, Princess is a forward step in a totally different way – this is a Princess of Color. First a little backstory: Since roughly the time of 1989's The Little Mermaid (which launched the studio’s new Golden Age of Animation), Mouseland has been under escalating criticism of how they’ve depicted minorities in general over the decades, and more specifically, how their signature (and highly marketable) “Princess Icons” (Ariel, Cindy, Sleeping, etc.) projected too-perfect images of Waspian/Euro beauty. I can think of no better illustration of this than a conversation I overheard at the screening between some female critics over their favorite childhood Disney characters. “My favorite was always Snow White”, said the Hispanic one. “She was the only one who looked like me”.
Not that they haven’t made some attempts to alter this formula before, with decidedly mixed results. First came 1992's Aladdin, with a brown Princess Jasmine. Critically acclaimed at first, until Islamic groups protested this old-Hollywood “Arabian Nights” stereotype to the point that Disney actually changed some song lyrics for the video release to eliminate some offensive comments about Arabs. Ouch.
Then came 1995's Pocahontas, which combined the usual Happy Meal-cute critters with songs about killing Indians and a hottie Native American title character in love with a blond Capt. John Smith (voiced by Mel Gibson). This incited even more protests about the studio vulgarizing a complex chapter of American history; among other things the real Poca was only 11 or 12 years old at the time of the incident.
So, some 14 years later, with the Little Mermaid/Aladdin directing team of Ron Clements and John Musker back at the helm, Disney tries to finally get it right and deliver something both new and old-fashioned at the same time, an African-American revision on the Grimm fairy tale “The Frog Prince”. For the most part, they’ve succeeded, but not without some compromises (and some “Louisiana” near-stereotypes).
The Princess and the Frog seems to take place in the same alternate-universe New Orleans of The Jazz Age (1920s-40s) that last year’s Strange Case of Benjamin Button did – one without Jim Crow laws, where blacks and whites appear to mix with much more freedom than one suspects was anywhere near the case at the time. Tiana (the name was changed from “Maddy” after some early protests), beautifully voiced by Anika Noni Rose of Dreamgirls fame, is a headstrong lass who runs a catering service and is determined to complete her daddy’s dream of opening her own restaurant. Her childhood friend Charlotte (Jennifer Cody) hires her to cater the upcoming grand ball in honor of visiting Prince Naveen (from some vaguely Mediterranean country called “Maldonia”), in hopes of snaring the wealthy young bachelor herself. Tiana needs the money to start her business. Fate and voodoo get in the way when the prince (Bruno Campos) makes an unwise deal with a local witch doctor (Keith David of the unmistakable baritone), transforming him into the title reptile. Tiana turns toad herself when, against her better instincts, she agrees to some frog-Frenching. Most of the rest of the film is taken up with this initially reluctant pairing making their way through the bayous, assisted by a horn-playing gator named Louis (Michael Leon-Wooley) and a Cajun firefly (Jim Cummings) to find Madame Odie (Jennifer Lewis), the swamp sorceress who can make them human again.
Generally a lot of fun, Princess features dazzling old-school animation in a variety of styles, catchy tunes by Randy Newman, and plenty of in-jokes for Disney buffs (everything from Zorro to Tiana’s princess getup resembling Brandy in the Disney Channel’s 1997 redo of “Cinderella”). The retro look is refreshing, although this is not on a level with their masterpieces. It caters to the current kids’ attention span with a sometimes too-hurried/noisy pace; a few quieter moments would have helped. But, provided they aren’t confused by the myriad plot turnarounds or scared by the surprising amount of spooky stuff on hand, kids blissfully unaware of the political ramifications should simply love it. The good stuff far outweighs the bad here, and Disney has made good on a long-overdue promise.
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