I was born in 1990, meaning my exposure to Disney's animated films was largely of the Renaissance variety. I grew up with Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin and The Lion King, and so embedded are they in my life that I can't even watch them critically. So when Disney chose to make The Princess and the Frog, their glorious return to hand-drawn animation, it was almost a cheap shot that they made it in the tradition of those films from the early 90's. There was no way I wasn't going to love the Christ out of this movie.I love the Christ out of this movie.
The decade or so since they last produced a worthwhile hand-animated film has given Disney the magical gift of hindsight and the ability to assess what worked and what didn't work about the films produced in the 90's and to narrow in on a perfect variation of their classic formula, with added grace and maturity. Disney's brilliant collection of animators, having been want of things to animate for several years, have exploded back onto the scene with the most infectious enthusiasm, and while, dare I say, the Princess and the Frog is an absolutely glorious little animated masterpiece, it's a particularly uneven glorious little animated masterpiece.
We open on New Orleans around 1910 or so, establishing the life of our protagonist, Tiana. Unlike her privileged friend Charlotte, she has simple dreams of one day owning a restaurant with her father. This dream, modest as it may be, is a quite lofty goal for a poor black family in 1910s New Orleans. Still, she persists, working hard and saving every penny she makes in menial jobs to make her dream come true, even after her father dies. And here we arrive at the main of the film. Handsome, vain and completely broke Prince Naveen has arrived with a rather dick-headed plan to marry into wealth, but quickly falls in with a Voodoo sorcerer named Dr. Facilier who transforms him into a frog and sets into motion a plan to acquire Charlotte's family's wealth with the help of Naveen's gullible manservant. Tiana is roped into the story when, due to some confusing fine print in the Frog Prince story, she also becomes a frog.
I mention that it's uneven, in spite of being positively brilliant, and I should explain myself. The first and third acts are as fantastic as anything I've ever seen in an animated film. We'd have to go back to Beauty and the Beast to find anything this good in a Disney movie, but the second act is just not up to par. It's fun and entertaining and has a few great songs, but you can see that all the writers' and animators' joy went into the beginning and the end, leaving a sort of confused middle section. It wouldn't be so noticeable if the beginning and the end weren't so extraordinarily great.
For one, Tiana just became Belle's equal for the title of "favorite Disney princess". Yeah, Snow White and Princess Aurora and Ariel are supposed classics (and one could make a good case for Ariel), but that's by virtue of being in classic films rather than being particularly well-defined characters. In fact, it's a common complaint that the message that these movies sends to little girls is "be pretty and shut up", which has always made Belle a favorite of mine. As a character, she's intelligent and sophisticated and, despite somehow not finding Gaston the coolest person on the fucking planet, very open-hearted. She's a good character first and a pretty doll second. Same with Tiana. As great a doll as I'm sure she'll make, she's a strong character first. She constantly harps on the importance of hard work, something I can't really recall seeing in the Pygmalion, wish fulfillment Disney canon. It's refreshing to see a Disney character with her life in her own hands, moving in the direction she wants even before all her dreams start to come true and her prince comes and finds her.
The musical portion of The Princess and the Frog is the most successful since Beauty and the Beast, anchored by a jazz-tastic score sung by people who can really sing, rather than big stars that will bring in the crowds but add nothing to their characters.
But the real success of this film can be summed up in two words: Dr. Facilier. Every time he's even near the screen the film's jazzy beat speeds up and grows darker, culminating in what may be the most jaw-dropping piece of animation I have ever seen with Facilier's showstopping number "Friends on the Other Side". Pitched with explosive, orchestral jazz against a frighteningly dark masterwork of color and movement, I can't exactly remember everything that happened in the subsequent scene because I was still reeling. Facilier himself is a bit of lanky charisma, a street magician and Voodoo practitioner of overflowing evil, captured so well by the animators and Keith David's distinctive voice.
At one point Facilier commits an act of such cold cruelty that I was beside myself with shock, as was the rest of the audience. Even Scar gave Mufasa the dignity of an epic, kingly death.
All the characters are exquisitely animated, with the other standout being Charlotte, the dolled-up spoof of classic Disney princesses. Born into money and ignorant of the difficult life Tiara leads, all she hopes for is to one day be wed to a prince. At one point, when things don't seem to be going her way, she decides "maybe I should wish harder" and starts begging the wishing star to bring her a prince. Her animation is as shapelessly cartoonish as I can imagine a realistic character being. She seems to explode with energy and exuberance in every moment of her existence, and she doesn't seem to have any fixed weight or even figure at all.
If the film has any concrete failings, it's in the comic angle, specifically the comic relief characters of Louis and Ray who are never as defined as the rest of the cast and seem to be there just to keep the little kids laughing. Although it's not all bad. Some of Louis' early scenes are quite funny, but his character especially never has a dramatic angle; he's comic relief through-and-through, making him feel like a flat stock character. And there's one scene involving a trio of frog hunters that struck me as totally out of place, despite being a fun throwback to Looney Tunes and all that--I don't think it really had a place in the movie. But since these two characters and that one scene are featured so prominently in the middling second act and do nothing to disrupt the absolute perfection of the first and third act, I'll forgive it all without a second thought.
I could talk for days about the animation. When was the last time animation of this quality was married to a story of equal quality? The Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast had pretty limited budgets (I'm not arguing that those aren't superbly animated, I'm just saying that the limited budget didn't allow a lot of complex animation) and the more exquisitely animated films of the earlier days of Disney, like Sleeping Beauty and Alice in Wonderland, tend to be pretty rigid affairs. I'm tempted to go all the way back to Bambi for a film with animation that is in service of such an effective story, rather than for its own sake. But it could just be that I got out of the theater two hours ago and am still overjoyed by the experience.
There are so many things about this film that make me never want to watch another computer animated film again (and let me quickly apologize to Pixar for saying that--I'll always love you). I'm suddenly reminded of all the things that make hand-animated features a more joyous affair: the colors, the backgrounds, just the way the characters look. It's all so warm and welcome, and since this is the first time I've seen an animated film in theaters since Tarzan, the simple experience of seeing it on the big screen was exhilarating.
Only time will tell if it will become a classic, and only time will tell if this is the start of another golden age for Disney, but my God I hope so.
10/10
And considering all the mean things I had to say about the middle portion, that should illustrate how goddamn great the first and third acts are.
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