REVIEW: ‘The Princess And The Frog’

Disney has put many of everyone’s favorite fairy tales to the big screen, and they’ve done it yet again. “The Princess and the Frog” is Disney’s first hand-drawn animated movie since “Home on the Range” in 2004 (which I personally don’t count as a movie), and is also their first story ever to feature an African-American princess (let alone an African-American protagonist). It is directed by John Musker and Ron Clements (the team who also directed the “Great Mouse Detectives”, “The Little Mermaid”, “Hercules”, “Aladdin” and “Treasure Planet”) and stars Anika Noni Rose as Tiana and Bruno Campos as Prince Naveen. They are also joined by Michael-Leon Wooley as the jazz-playing alligator Louis, Jim Cummings as the Cajun firefly Ray, and Jennifer Cody as the spoiled princess, Charlotte.

This movie is about Tiana, a hard-working girl who dreams of owning her own restaurant. When a prince comes to town (“town” meaning New Orleans), she really doesn’t care until her best friend Charlotte (Cody) invites her to cook at a masquerade ball that the prince is attending. However, thanks to a visit to the “Shadow Man”, a voodoo magician, the prince is now a frog. Mistaking Tiana for a princess, he asks that she kiss him and turn him back into a human. However, the spell goes wrong, and Tiana ends up as a frog as well! They have to find a way to get back to their human bodies before it’s too late.

This movie is wonderful. The musical numbers are catchy and bubbly (with the exception of the one done by the Shadow Man, of course – not so bubbly!), and they make you want to sing and dance. My favorite would be the first one, “Almost There”, which has very vivid and colorful imagery for Tiana’s “dream restaurant”, reminiscent of the cut-paper style used in “Kung Fu Panda”. All the jazz played throughout the movie is great as well, making it a movie you can watch and dance to at the same time (and if you can do THAT, my friends, you are talented).

This movie is a modern re-telling of a fairy tale, as I said earlier. Now, normally, I’m against fairy tales, with their “happy endings and eternal happiness” thing, but to me, this really didn’t feel like a stereotypical fairy tale. For one, with the death (that’s right, I said “DEATH”) of one of the characters, the ending felt really bitter-sweet. Also, there were quite a few times when you truly felt that Tiana had won (or lost), and then found out, nope… bad guys are still here, and she’s still a frog. But, as a touching story, it did make me cry a bit, and still left me with a warm, fuzzy, happy feeling that lingered even through the horrible traffic we experienced on the way home (you know, the kind where all the other lanes are going practically light speed, while you’re going so slow you’re almost going backwards). All the kids in the theater were just as happy, you could see, and a few of them actually cheered at the end. This movie feels like one that Disney used to make (the ones that didn’t feature teenage rebels; redundant, empty morals; or angry, dysfunctional preteen girls), and just make you feel all around happy.

This leads me to mention the greatest part of the movie yet: gumbo. A lot of the story revolves around or heavily involves a pot of gumbo. Not only is gumbo my personal favorite food in the whole wide world, it also brings Tiana’s family together in the beginning, sparks her dream, brings her and Neevan together near the middle, and plays a major part in their visit to Momma Odie. (By the way, I only found out that her name was Odie just now, on the internet, because everyone in the movie has an accent of some kind).

This movie is awesome, (especially the gumbo), and I really want to see it again, and this time take the whole family, ‘cause it’s amazing. It’s definitely something you would want to watch at the theaters as many times as possible, then get on DVD and treasure until the day you die. It’s just that awesome.