Everything I know about life I learned from Disney movies.
-When you're a princess, you always have your head in the clouds. That's all you need, for your prince will
always come for you, you don't need to lift a finger and go to them.
-As long as such characters aren't evil, everyone
always gets along with the secondary characters, and it's all
sunshine and happiness.
-Princes are daring, handsome, and will fall for you at first sight. They've always been bored with other women; all it took was to
find the right one.
-Snakes are
always evil, no exceptions.
-No protagonist, not even a supporting protagonist, will die. If a protagonist
must die, no protagonist will die if they survive the first half of the movie.
-The main villain in any modern plot will always be
rail thin and
sinister, with few
exceptions.
-And whenever you wish upon a star, your wish will always, always
magically come true.
I don't know about you, but I think it's time for a
new lesson. Keep in mind, there are spoilers ahead, so here's the spoiler-free, tl;dr version: I liked this movie a lot, found that it was sufficiently different from past material that Disney has put out, and feel that they're going in the right direction by throwing out the usual formula and shaking things up a lot. Anyway, spoilers, you have been warned.
You know, Disney was promoting Tiana as the first African American princess, but she spent about half the movie as a frog and not as a person. It's hard to claim that you've made a main character black, when she's green for a substantial part of the story. Still, I doubt that the prince could've made the kinds of leaps in character that he did as a person, so it's acceptable. And you don't have to be black to be African American anyway.
Tiana is not your ordinary Disney princess. Instead of being born into royalty, like Ariel or Jasmine or Snow White, she's more like Cinderella (and Snow White) in that she's a hard-working girl. Unlike Cinderella (or Snow White), Tiana has a goal she's working towards, and is very down to earth. She knows better than to rely solely on magic to get what she wants. Instead, she relies on her hard earned savings to help her achieve her dreams. She works two jobs, has been saving all her tips, and has grand dreams that are still realistic enough to come true. She is pretty overworked, but is so full of energy that it makes me wonder whether or not she's sneaking a Red Bull in between scenes. For someone who is graceful on her feet and moves around the restaurant with ease, it makes me wonder why she says she can't dance. Probably just shy.
Right when Tiana is about to achieve her dreams, her African American background bites her in the ass. It's still early in the movie, so she should've known it wouldn't be quite so easy. It's actually pretty daring of Disney, after making movies for years and pretending racism didn't exist (which is pretty easy when you tend to draw nothing but white characters and change the subject whenever Song of the South is brought up), to see them openly acknowledging that during the time of the movie's setting, black people were at a disadvantage because of their skin colour. I suspect that Tiana's father didn't have a choice when it came to serving in the Great War, but we never see enough of him to judge if he did want to serve the country in such a way or not.
Prince Naveen comes to town near the beginning of the movie, and he is definitely not Prince Charming, Prince Phillip, or even Prince Eric. Naveen has an eye for the ladies and openly flirts with anyone that does not have a Y chromosome. Even after becoming a frog, he seems to look upon other females with a favourable eye, as he did during one musical number, where he was surrounded by a redhead, brunette and some blondes, and mentioned so in the lyrics. He's more willing to play around all day than to do any sort of actual work, which is part of what causes him to be drawn in by the villain in the first place and changed into a frog. This doesn't change his personality at all, since all that seems to be on his mind are kisses, for he is far too happy to take advantage of old fairy tales if it means he gets attention from the ladies. He might've been a cliche if not for the fact that this is the 49th full length theatrical animated feature from Disney, but only their first to include a prince who only cares that the ladies are breathing and have a steady heartbeat. If I recall, it's usually characters like Gaston who possess such a character flaw (and even Gaston favoured one lady above the rest). Modern princes like Simba and Aladdin have only ever had their eyes on one girl. In creating such a character as Prince Naveen, Disney shows a willingness to throw out their playbook and change the rules.
Depending on the movie, Disney protagonists tend to be very durable. Mufasa was able to endure a stampede of wildebeest in The Lion King, and he probably would've survived being flung from the cliff as well if not for being trampled to death by the very same herd of wildebeest. Exactly zero characters died in prison in Robin Hood, even though food was scarcely provided and the cells didn't look too clean. In fact, no characters died at all during that movie, despite at least one madcap fight scene, and the scene at the end where the villains ran crazily into the burning castle). And Captain John Smith's musket wound in Pocahontas wasn't even animated (also, he didn't die from it, and the fight scene that was imminent late in the movie was averted). Likewise, Prince Naveen survives being whacked by two books, and Mama Odie herself has lived 197 years. She is rough with her snake, who seems not to mind such treatment and endures it well. Tiana's father does die off screen fighting in the Great War, but his durability was never shown on screen and so it's not known how much effort it took to kill him. He was also a supporting protagonist, and as the movie 2012 recently indicated, extreme peril will kill exactly one secondary character per scene. This rule isn't followed in The Princess and the Frog, but Disney does one up every single animated film they've done to date by first alluding to the father's death early on in the movie, and then showing the villain murder one of the main characters late in the movie. Because of the Walt Disney Company's past attitude towards character death, when said character was dying, all I could think was, "If you don't want the ending to completely suck, this character had better stay dead." The character was well written and extremely likable, and I wouldn't have minded if he survived the movie, but the moment he was mortally wounded, I felt that a death bed miracle would've weakened the movie and shown that Disney was still a company full of cowards. I think that's just sad.
The villain... okay, so Dr. Facilier is the most rail thin villain (physically, I mean) Disney ever came up with, so he still fits the stereotype that's existed since Jafar from Aladdin. When Jafar came along, it was clear that Disney had tossed their overweight villains away. Somehow. They probably needed Hercules's help. But anyway, Disney had tossed their overweight villains away and chose to use a new breed of slender, anorexic villains. Ratcliffe was a heavy exception, but still, most modern Disney villains look like they could desperately use a sandwich. I think the best villain they've had to date has been Gaston. Handsome, muscular, popular, and if not for his nasty jealous streak and pompous attitude, he could've easily been a prince. Dr. Facilier, though, isn't that strong a villain. He's more of a tempter than a true villain, kind of like Satan in the Bible, and is very limited in his power. If anything, Prince Naveen's valet, Lawrence, could've been the main villain, but his purpose in the movie was to illustrate that there are consequences when you take a title you didn't earn, consequences that Aladdin never faced when he used similar means to become Prince Ali.
I'm not sure that a stronger villain was needed, though. The Princess and the Frog is a down to earth movie, one which presents a main character who doesn't rely on magic or wishes or other people to help her meet her goal. She is strongly independent, and so when other characters are blindly wishing on a star and waiting for their princes to come, Naveen works hard, and even when she's a frog, she still works towards her goals and doesn't let something as silly as an amphibious transformation get in the way. Apparently it is easy being green after all.
I really liked that Tiana was taught at an early age that wishing isn't enough. A few years ago, Rhonda Byrne wrote a book called The Secret, and a movie was made to further promote the ideas within the book. When I watched it, it seemed to me like they were promoting the idea that if you just sat around and thought happy thoughts, those thoughts would magically come true, and if they didn't, it was entirely your fault for not believing hard enough. The Secret is nothing more than a modern day When You Wish Upon A Star, and helps to show how shallow those early Disney movies truly are. Cinderella thought real hard about her dreams as she scrubbed the floor and her fairy godmother suddenly appeared one day. Snow White thought real hard about the prince that would some day come and as she lay in a kind of magical death, her prince did come. Although Princess Aurora was asleep for a good portion of Sleeping Beauty, I bet she dreamed about her prince during her long sleep. In contrast, The Princess and the Frog shows that wishing is only the first step. After wishing comes doing, although a little bit of stargazing never hurt anyone.
A few things I'm just going to touch upon: the supporting cast was wonderful, since it consisted of characters that weren't one-dimensional or just thrown in to advance the plot. The music was decent enough to work, and the songs seemed like they were intended to be a celebration of early 20th century jazz rather than an attempt to be the next Be My Guest or Under The Sea. Plus, although Disney chose a popular R&B singer to perform their end song, they did not choose one of their Radio Disney stars like they did for The Lion King 1 1/2 and for that I am truly grateful. None of the cast members chewed the scenery, not even John Goodman. Keith David did a great job as the villain, a role he seems well suited for and has been indulging in a lot lately (he was not exactly a protagonist in the Numb3rs episode he guest starred in, and he lent his voice to the final boss of Dissidia: Final Fantasy, among other projects he's done). Somehow, the animation quality was even better in this movie than it was in Brother Bear, which leads me to believe that there are still places that Disney can take hand-drawn art. And the payoff at the end of the movie was kinda predictable, but for the target audience it was perfect. When I watched it, many people in the audience at the theatre were surprised when it happened, whereas I could see it coming from a mile away. It wasn't predictable in a cliche way, though. It felt more like the feeling of figuring out a mystery novel and then reading the end and being satisfied that I was right.
Lastly, this movie features a lot of subtle (and not so subtle) references to Disney's past animated movies. One scene looked like it was lifted from Sleeping Beauty, right down to the camera angle, and I couldn't help but wish that the dress in the scene started changing colours. In the same scene, you could see a mermaid costume, and in another scene, one of the jazz musicians was wearing a lion costume. There are many other interesting touches and references that can be picked up by ardent Disney fans, but aren't obvious enough to ruin the movie for casual fans.
In the end, The Princess and the Frog did nearly everything right and was a very enjoyable film to watch. I would definitely watch it again in the theatre. Disney showed that they're willing to do things they'd been too afraid to do in an animated feature, and if this continues, they may enjoy another golden age like they had in the early 90's. They might even be able to re-release The Black Cauldron in a few years, possibly with its deleted scenes restored to the film, but I suppose that's idle wishing.
I wonder if Tiana's Palace survived Katrina.
This article/review was previously posted to the animation site Keyframe Online, and more of my reviews can be read here.