Review in a Hurry: In an era dominated by CGI, Disney makes a bold return to 2-D animation. The medium may be old-fashioned, but the story is thoroughly, refreshingly modern. Funny, inspiring and gorgeously rendered, The Princess and the Frog is an instant classic.
The Bigger Picture: Disney's animated movies sought to portray independent heroines, especially in recent years, but let's be honest: Ariel was willful but lived a life of leisure. Belle was modest and smart, but married rich. And Cinderella—don't even go there.
Now, we have Tiana (Anika Noni Rose), a determined New Orleans woman from the poor side of town, who believes that hard work, pure and simple, will help her achieve her dream of opening a restaurant. She's a self-sufficient dame, and her story is steeped in a reality totally foreign to the Disney fairy tale canon, until now.
The movie doesn't shy away from the working-class world of Tiana and her parents (Terrence Howard and Oprah Winfrey). She travels from her longtime friend Charlotte's (Jennifer Cody) mansion-filled neighborhood to her own, drags herself to another double shift at the diner, keeps her precious savings in a drawer of mason jars.
She relishes her sense of work ethic, though—and parents disgusted with "kids these days" and their lack of drive will see Tiana as a fitting role model. Still, there is a strong sense of the challenges Tiana faces on her journey as a young woman entrepreneur, making the inevitable happy ending that much happier. Even better, Tiana is primarily responsible for her own happy ending, and isn't about to be rescued or saved by any man.
But the movie would be all work and no play without a handsome hombre. A visiting Prince Naveen (Bruno Campos) isn't the stereotypical noble gentleman on a white horse, but a ne'er do-well ladies' man who hasn't worked a day in his life. Tiana's life is thrown into chaos when Naveen is turned into a frog after a voodoo "shadow man" works his black magic, and drags her into a swampland adventure that's both humorous and sentimental.
The lesson here is how to achieve a work-life balance—Tiana needs to stop and smell the roses, the Prince needs self-realization through hard work—but it's a lot more fun than a corporate HR seminar, and way more interesting than the "true love fixes everything" theme of just about every other Disney animated picture.
While the storyline is fresh, the animation is beautifully vintage. There's a charm to hand-drawn art that 3-D lacks. The characters have an expressiveness that harks back to the classics we know and love, a more human look and feel. The colors are brilliant, the drawing crisp; 1920s New Orleans jumps off the screen. A slate of jaunty jazz-inflected songs doesn't hurt, either.
The 180—a Second Opinion: There is a beautiful diversity in The Princess and the Frog—Tiana is black, Charlotte is white, Naveen seems to be of South Asian descent. Some naysayers are bound to grumble that it's hyper-idealistic to see them all get along so swimmingly in the pre-Civil Rights era (these same people also no doubt eat puppies). And parents, be warned: Shadow-man voodoo king Facilier is host to many scary scenes and images, a bevy of ghosts from "the other side" that give Harry Potter's Dementors a run for their money.
(Originally published Nov. 24, 2009 at 11:50 p.m.)
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