The Princess and the Frog

Walt Disney’s The Princess and the Frog

MPAA: G

The Flicks-a-saurus Rex enjoyed his little snack last night at the cinema. The
Princess and the Frog was a little snack that sent me back a few years to when I was a kid watching all the Disney classics for the first time. We’ve got maybe a 7 out of 10 here with Princess and the Frog. It was kind of like The Emperor’s New Groove meets The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Not that there was a hunchback or anything, but the movie had light, off the cuff, quick, almost Saturday Night Live humor, and a mix of some of the creepier scenes from Hunchback. It was a fun film to add to the kid’s library of Disney flicks, but did not compare to the brilliance of Beauty and the Beast or Aladdin.

In our age of computer animated sensations like Up and Shrek, it seems almost ludicrous for Disney to bother with a film that falls into step with the classics it made starting with Snow White. I first thought it was just a gimmick to get grandmothers and mothers to drag the next generations down memory lane, and while yes it was a little nostalgic, it was mostly a tribute to an era of animation that will soon be so antiquated no one will ever make a film like this again.



One thing that bothered me was that we really never got to know the bad guy the way the classics do. Disney is famous for the saying “the villain we love to hate” well this film gave us a pretty mediocre villain. He wasn’t so diabolical and twisted that we just loved every scene that he was in like Jafar or Captain Hook, instead he was about as flat as the animation that depicted him. We get no look at his back story, and from the beginning he just jumps in to being naughty, he was almost boring. His shadow was more interesting than he was.

I was also not thrilled by the music. When the Lion King was over the audience all walked out of the theater with “Hakuna Matata” running through their heads; in contrast I had forgotten the songs in Princess and the Frog by the time the last song was over. It was pretty disappointing to come out of a Disney film and not have any cool choruses running through my head.

I enjoyed the New Orleans jazz scene that was the theme of this film. The jazz was a fun background piece. The main characters were fun and even better were the side characters that we met along the way. The plot was from the same cookie cutter for most kid’s films but there were some fun twists to the classic tale of Princess and the Frog. And for those of you looking to pick a fight with the racial issues behind a black Disney princess, well have fun, there wasn’t much to the racial side of things.

So hurry you guys take those little dinos of yours to Princess and the Frog. It is a fun family film that even the parents will laugh at!