Directors: Ron Clements and John Musker
Original Release: 2009
Choice: Our Girl's
My Overall Rating: 3 stars out of 5
Our nine-year-old daughter had some extra motivation in her movie pick this week. Her dance studio is using The Princess and the Frog as its theme for the end-of-year performance. The film is loosely based on The Frog Princess, a novel by E.D. Baker which is in turn based on the Grimm brothers' story, "The Frog Prince." While she has a basic familiarity with the original fairy tale, Our Girl had never seen the movie before so entertainment doubled as research.
The story is set in 1920s New Orleans. Tiana, a waitress, dreams of owning her own restaurant. She kisses a frog expecting him to turn into a prince only to become a frog herself. From there, she pursues two goals: to break the curse and to realize her ambition.
I enjoyed this movie more than I expected. The story is fairly predictable but there are a few pleasant surprises, my favorite being the resolution of firefly Ray's unrequited love for the Evening Star. The music is excellent, as it darn well better be for any movie set in New Orleans. The ever-dependable Randy Newman composed both songs and score. Two of the songs - "Almost There" and "Down in New Orleans" - were Oscar-nominated but lost to "The Weary Kind" from Crazy Heart. The film is cel-animated and the artwork for the musical sequences is especially nice. This one was my favorite:
Yeah, that was a pretty good movie.
ReplyDeleteWe just finished watching Madagascar 3. Funny!
"That's Bolshevik!"
and
"It's obvious I'm just an emotional whoopee cushion for to sit on."
We've only watched the first Madagascar movie so far. It was fun - don't know if we'll do the others. That's probably up to the girl.
DeleteI thought the first one was only okay. Pretty typical. The second was less good. This one, though, was really funny. For me, anyway, although even my oldest (17) was laughing as much as I was.
DeleteGood to know. How many kids do you have? Ages?
DeleteAbout to turn 10 (this week)
Delete12
17
Fun! So I may be hitting you up for advice on the teenage years...
DeleteLock them up in a closet until they turn 18.
DeleteWe have thought of shipping her off to Switzerland for the middle school years.
DeleteThere is always that.
DeleteOn the other hand, I'd hate the idea of her going through all of that alone. People who miss their adolescence have very short memories, I think.
DeleteI sort of watched this with my sister a couple summers ago. We were talking and our girls were watching it so bits of it float up to memory. Though the last video you have here isn't familiar, so maybe I watched even less than I remember. Like many, though, I love a beautiful reproduction of 1920s sensibility.
ReplyDeleteI hope your little one's performance goes off without a hitch.
It's been a long time since I've seen a Disney movie that really grabbed me. We don't watch many. My wife is opposed to them in principle. Fantasia 2000 was the last one I genuinely loved.
DeleteThanks for the positive thoughts! I'm looking forward to the recital.
Your wife is opposed them in principle?
DeleteShe is troubled - justifiably, really - by the prevalent sexism and racism of the early movies. I also think the Disney features of the past 25ish years, while grand in spectacle, lack in depth. The films coming out of Pixar, Dreamworks and, of course, Studio Ghibli, are a lot more satisfying.
DeleteI realize Pixar is technically Disney and the Magic Kingdom is also Miyazaki's distributor. But the work coming out of those studios has generally been a lot more sophisticated.
I'm pretty sure I never actually kissed a frog but I'm still trying to make my dream come true. A universal theme, if ever there was one.
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely. It's a great metaphor, too. We often have to do things we really don't want to do in order to get where we want to go.
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ReplyDeleteThis movie was very sweet, but defintely not in the treacly way of the pre-1980 Disney princesses.
ReplyDeleteRay and the star... sigh... No spoilers here, but I can say that there was a key visual that reminded me very much of the way that Neverland looked in the sky upon approach, in Disney's original Peter Pan movie. "Second star to the right..."
Nice catch, Cyg! It really is a sweet moment.
DeleteTreacly - love that word. Apt in this case, too.
I find it kind of odd that a black woman apparently dreams of being...a really good maid, basically. I may be judging that song a little harshly, out of context, but that's my impression.
ReplyDelete"The Weary Kind" is a great song. Randy Newman is hit or miss. "You've Got a Friend in Me" was an instant classic (though it sounds far better when Robert Goulet sings it in the second Toy Story). "Almost There" seems even as a song to be a miss in itself. I kind of liked it better in the theme from The Jeffersons.
The dream is to own a restaurant but I think your skepticism is not entirely misplaced. Disney has a sketchy history along such lines, to say the least.
DeleteThis is one of those Disney movies I enjoyed. It had some good lines, too, for people who live in Louisiana or know some about the culture...like "up north? Like around Shreveport?" That's so what we say in the southern part of the state. Another one that's I was surprised by was Tangled.
ReplyDeleteI don't know the region at all but I felt the film presented it well.
DeleteHaving grown up in Shreveport, that line made me laugh.
DeleteMy southern explorations have never gone that far west. I've been to Virginia, North Carolina and Florida but that's it. Just looked up Shreveport on Wikipedia - nearly 200,000 people. I had no idea!
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